To believe that a communication system which relies on children between 7 and 11 to be messengers, is not going to be an effective means of communication?

Newletter is used as reinforcement of the original letter. Hopefully the parent will get one or the other and if we're lucky - both!

We get letters, and newsletters, all sent the same way, in the book bag.

Where I work, a secondary, we send routine stuff home with the kids (concert dates etc). More important stuff, like the date for progress day, we send in the post.....some children 'accidentally' forget to take those home

teacher's

without boring everyone senseless, my policy is to avoid "speaking" to his teacher for the rest of the school year following the incident where dh and i made an appt to "speak" to said teacher, during which teachers very defensive response to our points was that we weren't returning ds's library books promptly enough and he kept "telling" ds to remind us...

will not be speaking to this teacher again about anything significant - will be going straight to the head and since that is the equivalent of calling in a nuclear strike - we will not be doing it!

Our school teach the children quite early on to be responsible for letters and communication.

I've never seen it as a problem, but a friend whose younger lad is in yr 5 stll dislikes the system - even after 9 years contact with the school.

ok. So parents and children can be relied upon to take newsletters home effectively but not letters?

"You;'re all whinging."

I beg to differ!

I did say uyou were all whinging, didn't I.

Speak to his teacher.

We get one of those.

I must say that for us, notes in the reading bag work. And we are not known for our organisational skills Chez Bishop.

I am replying to op, bossy.

It would pointydog, yes ........

Would that be a newsletter that kids put in bags to take home?

well pointydog my 5 yo is expected to remember to tell me things without the back-up of notes in bags. this is ridiculous and ianbu.

It's a huge task though to split correspondence into those who have e-mails and those who don't. To save waste the teacher would have to have a list of who has e-mail and who has hard copy; it would result in more confusion. We remind parents of important stuff in a weekly newsletter to back up anything that's gone out in the week.

Then you have the parents who despite all this just stick any letters straight in the bin and then come to the office to moan about lack of communication .....

Lots of homes do have computers, but lots don't. Schools have to be sure that they are even handed in their approach.....for example our school policy is noT8 to assume that a child has access to a computer for homework, for example, because many people don't* have them.

Real world isn't MN

YABU

I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect 5+ year olds to put a letter in their bag and for them to hand it over or parent check.

Granted, the process should involve getting letter and putting in bag.

You;'re all whinging.

But for those who do have email it can cut down on paper waste. Some parents don't go to school and wouldn't see the notice board. Car shares, other people collecting, picking up, dropping off, before and after school clubs.

I would think that many homes have PC's, even my MIL has one (silver surfer)? How can I see your words? Does anyone use a fax machine anymore (I do)?

My school also gives a hard copy to everychild in there diary at the end of the week.

Stamp the things on their foreheads, that is the only way I can think it would be fullproof.

I forget this is a AIBU thread.....

[runs for the hills]

At our school we hand notes to the children as they leave. It's not ideal but for us e-mail isn't the answer; low income families, unlikely to have PC access. Also many who don't have Ebglish as a first language.

We've been talking about it recently as we have sent out some letters for an issue that requires parental consent. The letters have an 'opt out' slip - that is, parental consent is assumed unless the slip is returned. To me that's not good enough - the parent may not even get the letter yet we are assumming they've given consent.

THis is a harder issue than it seems. If you start to use e-mail you will potentialy stigmatise thse families who do not have one. If you run a part e-mail/part paper system you will significantly increase the work load of the school admin.

I think that homework diaries are probably the best way of doing this sort of thing, or vontact books.

But if you use these, some parents will complain about this method as well. It is one of those 'can't win' situations for the school.

Forgot to add that the 13 yo has one too and it will continue until he is 15!

My dcs have a contact book also and it is up to the parent to check it each evening. When they are older if the message isn't too long the dc write it in the book themselves.

sorry the thread tiltle is wrong it should go up to at least 16

I would be grateful if our dds school sent letters at all.

DD1 was expected to remember to tell me that she was in a show at 6pm, what costume she needed, what date, and when to be there beforehand. I got a written invitation to the show, but nothing else. DD1 claimed to have had no letter. I went in and asked and was told that the children are responsible for passing messages on