school not sharing teachers email address

[springrises]

there have been some low level bullying incidents this year and I wanted to get in touch with my daughter's form tutor (year 6) because when I call, they don't call back.
I'm also a bit unsure about sending such a personal email to a general inbox which any school secretary can read. School have just sent a response to me, saying they don't give out teachers email addresses and asked me to write out whatever it was and send it to the school general info email address.
I'm wondering what kind of communication you have at your schools? I rarely email school, but in the past have been able to email a teacher directly. You can't phone them because they're teaching and then they often phone me back when I'm at work or miss the call, so email seems like a more logical way to communicate. Is it normal for primary/middle schools to refuse to give out the teachers email address?
Communication is generally poor from this school, so this is part of a bigger picture.

The bigger picture is that some schools protect their teachers' privacy and freedom to not be on call 24/7 when there are perfectly functional channels to go through.

Ours gives us the choice. Parents can make appointments with us via the electronic diary. We can tick the box if we want the parents to have our email addresses. Very few of us tick the box.
What your school has suggested sounds very sensible. Presumably you email, leaving a paper trail of why you are requesting a meeting with the teacher.

It is normal because the school office email adress is manned during school hours. A teacher might be part time or not check their emails for several days as its not really an office job where you keep checking emails.

Its also normal for schools to give out email addresses As schools have different ways of doing the same thing and those schools might expect staff to login everday after the children go home.

It's normal. You just send the email to the generic email marked 'For the attention of' whichever member of staff you want.

It's quite normal in primary schools to just have a general email address which is then forwarded to individual teachers as parents often abuse them, emailing at ridiculous hours and expecting immediate feedback, making complaints when that is not possible.

School secretaries are used to seeing confidential information and will not discuss it. This would be misconduct and could cost them their jobs but if you are concerned, you could email a generic request that the teacher contacts you 'on an urgent matter'.

Our school has a class email for each class - the teachers access messages sent to that address but it is not their personal email. There is also the general office email.

Could you have a word with the teacher in person at pick up time instead? If you don't usually pick them up could you arrange to pick them up on a pre-appointed day when you've requested a meeting with their teacher?

My daughters school happily give out email addresses if asked
I'm in a school and I have my own email address as well as my personal one
I've never been asked for the school one. To be honest I probably last looked at that at email address when we broke up for Christmas

Yes it’s normal because otherwise many parents will be constantly emailing the teacher with trivial issues and the teacher would be expected to constantly reply.

The school office emails are as confidential as any others and it shouldn’t matter if the office staff read it. They have plenty of confidential information that they manage not to share.

If you’re not happy with the teacher phoning you or emailing the office then book an appointment.

Our school has the teachers work email addresses listed on the webpage. It is the preferred method of communication. Phone calls would be a complete waste of staff time.

Teachers normally respond just during their official hours. The nice thing about e-mail is it doesn’t expire. I suspect it has to be a matter of school culture to support teachers in that regard.

Very common. My kids school doesn’t give out teachers emails either. You have to email the office and they forward it on.

Yep normal at my DC (primary) school to not have the class teacher's email address. There is a general school inbox and also a separate one for the SENCO.

Ask the office to set up a meeting with the teacher or arrange a time for them to call you. Or just email the general school inbox requesting a meeting, without doing into details in the email.

Another who's school use the centralised email address - not individual teacher's email inboxes

yeah, but phone calls and school meetings take up a lot more teacher time, don't they? I'm trying to see it from teachers perspective as I have a similar role myself, but imagine the alternatives to a teacher emailing parents takes considerably longer?!

Teachers don’t like putting things in writing, because parents often use their written words as evidence to start yelling and reporting them. I used to be a teacher and I avoided putting things in writing as much as possible. When I did write it was a huge effort to be diplomatic and use the appropriate wording which wouldn’t offend parents and which couldn’t come back to bite me. A quick chat is much easier because there’s nothing on record so you can be honest.

yea, that makes sense. Since writing this, I've realised that I do have her email address as dd emails her homework over to her teacher. But I'm guessing it would be poor form to email this way?

I wish that were the case at my school. I work in secondary and get emails from parents at all sorts of ridiculous times of night and then again first thing in the morning when they haven't had a response.

This is normal and as it should be. At my youngest DC's school you used to be able to email the teacher directly but they now have year group email addresses which I think is much better for the teacher/ school and makes no difference to me as a parent.

If you have concerns about bullying and put it in an email then the teacher will store that email centrally anyway.

Sending it to the generic email address also creates a helpful paper trail in case the teacher becomes unwell or (if they're really terrible) pretends they never got it.

Either email it or email and ask for a call back.

I have a work email for school and a private one for friends and family, etc. I give parents my work email. I check my work email only on work days, in working hours. I encourage parents to use it to get in touch, and I write back or call, depending on the issue. Only rarely have I had a parent misuse email.

I would welcome your email about bullying concerns.

This, my friend said shed get the IT IS NOW FOUR DAYS SINCE I CONTACTED YOU AND NO RESPONSE shoutyness. For an email sent on a Friday at 6pm and not answered by Monday at 8am.. major reason why left teaching!

Weird they won't share

Our school each class has teacher email for that class then the office email for anything else or they will forward your email to teacher

The trick to this is to cut and paste a response: 'I check this email on X days between Xam and Xpm. I will not see or respond to emails outside these hours.'

Phone calls and meetings take up more time than one email, but generally emails turn into a back and forth exchange which means they take up much longer. And YY to avoiding putting things in writing.

My favourite email sign off I ever saw was a signature saying “I work 3 days a week” but without committing to which 3, so you never knew how long you would be waiting for a reply. I wish I was brave enough for that!

It can be normal, yes. At our previous primary, we were given an email for all class teachers to contact directly and they also did all their own emails. So when homework was sent out to the class, it came direct from the teachers themselves.

At our new school, there is one admin email managed by the admin person and all emails come from that inbox. Anything I need to send to teachers, I email there and presumably it gets forwarded on to teachers. So I think both are normal and fine.

Given the effort it takes me to stay on top of my inbox, I can only imagine it's a sensible approach so teachers are freed up to teach and focus on pastoral care rather than dealing with angry parent emails coming through at 9pm. That's not to say that's what you'd be sending, of course, but given what I've seen parents get worked up about, I can't imagine it's the most productive use of teacher time.