To think a hard boundary should be drawn with teachers?

It depends. My son’s school, while very good in general, has a slight problem with communication, so something might be mentioned on the newsletter (a date for an event, an activity the children have to choose which needs parent approval etc) and then there is no more information about it in any way. So then I have called or emailed. I need info to be able to make sure my child is ready.
There’s also no parents evening any more so that will force some parents to get in touch if they have things they want to discuss.
I suppose if the admin were better it would cut down on the need to have contact with teachers.

I have experience with two systems, I collect my youngest child from Primary every day, they are let out of a specific door by their teacher, and there's an opportunity for two way conversation. It's lovely, I really like the teacher and she's super helpful. The school put parents and teachers in front of each other before and after school and as a result I think communication is very friendly and easy.

Secondary for my elder two is a general email address that I think in four years I have used four times for two children. Once I have had a response. I'm lucky that my children haven't had any serious issues and I feel for parents who need that conversation because it's really not easy to have. When we do get to speak to teachers they are lovely and helpful, but it's much too hard to do.

This is somewhat my area of expertise. It's logistically impossible. It would be extremely expensive, hugely risky from a data protection perspective, and AI simply isn't good enough to do it.

This is somewhat my area of expertise. It's logistically impossible. It would be extremely expensive, hugely risky from a data protection perspective, and AI simply isn't good enough to do it.

I managed this to meet individual parents needs.

The shift working, mum who was very anxious and emailed me at 10.00pm because M&S had ‘sold out of slim fit trousers in an age 4-5’, I did respond to straightaway. I felt that by responding, I could support her initially as a parent of a new starter, develop our relationship so that she trusted me and then carefully wean her off the expectation communication by lengthening the time it took me to respond. It worked, after a couple of weeks she didn't need the same level of contact.

This was the same mum that asked if I could write up a journal each day, for her child, to let her know what he had eaten, who he had played with, toileting times and his learning, something, as others have said, she was used to from the private nursery ( with much smaller adult/child ratios). I said ‘yes I could…but what did she want me to take out of her child’s day…(and that of other children)…phonics?, maths?, PE…whilst I write up thirty journals, one for each child…she got my point!

In the main, I didn't check my work emails after 19.00.

I totally agree.

What might be useful is if AI can assist.
So emails that are for information only - ie about medical appointments, sickness, whatever, if AI could collate them into a post of bullet points for the teacher, or a paragraph, and then highlight those that need a response. It wouldn't be hard to do. Something like like this.

Dear Janice

You've received 12 parent emails as of 8:20 this morning. Timmy has tonsillitis, Jonny has a hospital appointment and Jenny is coming in but has a sore throat so please keep an eye on her.

Sarah and Molly have had a big fall out so expect drama there, and Marcus forgot to order his lunch again - he'll have a jacket potato please.

You've also had 4 emails that need a more in depth look. I've starred these for you:

• Zara's mum with an update for her echp review
• peters dad wants to book an appointment to discuss spelling
• Tina has moved foster home again
• Matthew's dad has made a complaint re the new school uniform and you'll need draft a response.

Kind regards

Your AI assistant

Seriously, AI could do the legwork, and the summary takes 3 minutes to read, with the important emails prioritised.

Maybe some people expect a response out of hours because it's repeatedly emphasised how teachers work evenings, weekends and much of the holidays...

I'm patient with emails and happy to wait for a response, but I can see how of someone has said they always work evenings until 11, then why some parents would consider it working time. I don't think it's a helpful attitude for those parents, but it might explain some of it.

Personally, in my kids school, we email admin who forwards the email to the teacher. Whilst this makes sense in a large secondary school, it feels overkill personally at primary where there's only 30 kids. That's not a huge 'caseload'. Then again, like in most jobs, one of two awkward parents/clients often take up a disproportionate amount of time, so I can see why they do it this way.

Yes they should do. When I’ve emailed my DS school out of hours and got a reply, I’ve told them I never expect them to answer that same day.

In my opinion, it's the teachers fault for responding.

If questioned by a parent they can simply reply that they will respond to emails during their working hours. Simples.

I think most professionals are used to receiving emails out of hours aren't they? It's a fact of modern life. Choose to mute them or whatever totally fine, but it isn't at all unreasonable for the sender to send at a time suitable for them if they're not demanding a response in an unreasonable time frame.

For many issues, it is reasonable for parents to expect there to be some way of receiving a prompt response to a query. Whether that is through a phone call (to reception to get a message though, get information and pass back etc) or through an email or whatnot. It is up to the school to make sure that there is a channel for this that works for both parties.

Me too. Isn't half the point of emails that the sender and responder email at a time convenient to them? School staff can't blame parents because they can't 'switch off' or hold their own boundaries.

Our school communicates the boundaries on day 1 as part of orientation. I don’t think anyone expects teachers to respond around the clock.

My daughter’s school doesn’t give out teachers’ emails, we can only contact through dojo or via the office, we also get regular reminders about not getting a response outside outside of working hours.

I am also a teacher, but in FE, so our contact is more with the students than parents, and we do have to teach them etiquette about teams/email and how quickly they can expect a response. A while ago I did have issues with a student who got quite irate that I wasn’t responding to his teams messages at 11pm, but generally students are pretty good with it. I work three days a week so for the first few weeks of term I set my out of office on my non working days to help manage expectations from the start.

I think teachers also need to be sticking to work hours for emails, and that also needs to be led and modelled by SLT (I say as a teacher).

I no longer access my emails from home - on mat leave atm but it's massively helped while at my current school, and SLT remind staff not to email students over the weekends either.

I don't think anyone has an issue with emails being sent to teachers at the convenience of parents.

I’ve known teachers to complain about this practice by parents even when no immediate reply was expected.

I think they still felt under pressure to reply.

I get messages at all times, I send messages usually outside of school times about my own children. But I only answer messages in my working hours (though I do other school work in my own time). I only answer internal school stuff at odd hours or weekends, because like every employment - most pressure comes from colleagues, even in retail I found that to be the case, and customer service is notorious for Unreasonable member of the public.

I don't think anyone has an issue with emails being sent to teachers at the convenience of parents. It's the parents who send an email at 8pm, a follow-up at 10pm and then phone the school at 8.30am to complain that no one has replied. It's the parents who email at 11am and then turn up to the school at midday. It's the parents who email on a Saturday morning and then email copying the head to complain on Sunday morning. It's the parents who find out teacher's personal phone numbers or home addresses and will use those (texting, calling or turning up).

not tutors not babysitters

Part of this needs to be on the teachers.
They are absolutely entitled to their evenings and weekends. And I am entitled not to deal with none urgent school related stuff while I'm at work.
That means I will do most school related contact in my free time. That doesn't mean I'm expecting a reply at that point. I'm sending a message when convenient for me, hoping for a reply when convenient for the teacher. If they are choosing to have apps on their phone that alert when a school message cones through, thats on them to manage.

I don't think that is unreasonable at all.

I've had a lot of teachers send emails (replies to me) at unsociable hours, I definitely didn't expect them to. Easier just to deal with something quickly, I suppose.

I think they are fair enough questions to ask of his teacher though, ie ‘I don’t know what level reading he should be at…what do you think?…is he keeping up with the class?…is their anything I need to work on with him?’
Teachers expect you to help the child at home so I think it’s okay to look for guidance with this.

I used be meeker I think 😅
Older now and the parent of an autistic and severely dyslexic child who was thought to be simply ‘weak’ in his first couple of years in school because he was quiet and had a young, inexperienced teacher. I didn’t realise. They didn’t use ‘weak’ to describe him in the parent-teacher meetings you see (I knew he wasn’t).

That’s another thing…teachers do speak in a sort of code, especially when it comes to things like autism (which was queried later on when everything started to unravel). I didn’t realise ‘it could be sensory, is it behavioural?’ meant ‘it could be autism’ because I knew absolutely nothing about autism then. You live and learn.

I would check on your child OP. Schedule the appointment, be polite etc, but if you need to know how your child is doing then you do need to ask.

Having spent the last year in my SENDCo job panic-replying to parents all day long (even when teaching) and trying to meet a whole host of demands each and every day into the evening, I’ve drafted a general response asking for time and forbearance while ‘the team’ (we are a team) decide on the appropriate course of action. I will now send this instead of trying to do ten things all at once. My job is to oversee provision, I cannot solve every single problem children encounter during the day - even at home! - it’s not sustainable.

Good. I had a head having a go at me for sending an email ‘out of hours’. Crazy! Do they think we are all able to send emails ‘in hours’. The first time I am able to get to admin in the day is after 9:30pm. So that’s when emails are sent. I certainly wouldn’t expect an ‘out of hours‘ response!

I have insomnia and do work at all ours, sending emails with them set to not be delivered until 8am, otherwise I’d look like a mad woman.

I think this is absolutely a factor. I taught reception and noticed it getting progressively more demanding in terms of parents expecting lots of detail about their individual child’s day and then citing nursery when explaining their expectations.

After a particularly hard year of this I made it part of my ‘New Parents’ meeting in July to explain the difference and what to expect. I told them quite clearly that I couldn’t teach and observe their children if I was constantly jotting down when they had another sip of water and if they’d done a poo that day. It was fine after that.

The thing I never cracked though was parents expecting lots of reminders for everything. I had a parent say that she expected a text reminder the day before for things like school trips and non uniform days…well you had the trip letter and paid for the trip so it’s up to you to put it on the calendar! But we’re all used to getting reminders for appointments and so on so I guess people become conditioned to expect it for all sorts of other things.