Should parents have teachers' direct emails?

[MathsMagpie]

I work in a school where parents are given their child's teacher's direct email.

At my children's school, we are not allowed to have the class teacher's email address and instead everything is sent to the office and then dealt with accordingly and all replies (even from the teachers) then come back from the office email address.

Which way do you prefer as either a parent and/or teacher?

I find it frustrating sometimes not being able to get a message to my children's teacher direct (I can't do drop off and pick up) but then also feel very frustrated by so many of the many many parent emails that I receive.

Primary - only via the office. 90% of all queries were often solved by the office staff anyway and if we really had to talk to the teacher, we got a response very quickly, we only dropped off/picked up once a week.

Secondary - 1st school - lots of individual addresses and it helped as you contact them because of the lesson, not because a lost jumper.
2nd school - mainly office as they aren't published but over the last 18 months we collected a number of email addresses and teachers are ok with being contacted directly.

For dd secondary school its all via emails sometimes get a phone call.

Primary is more via the office although I do have sencos email never had reason for anyone else's.

I’m a teacher and parents know my email address and I’m fine with this- it is a work email address after all.

They don’t really email that often. Maybe because I’m primary so see most parents at the end of the day anyway so if tney have anything to ask/say, they’ll do it then. I prefer taking to parents over email than the phone, for sure.

Sometimes parents send a message to me via the office app, and that just annoys me as the office forward it on, but I can’t reply direct so I then have to go and ring them at break/lunch time to answer their query.

God, no. We have a generic e-mail address at work (not a school). It sounded like a good idea at the time - members of the public could contact us at their convenience (including evenings and weekends). We thought it would be especially useful for clients who work and aren't free to.make calls during office hours. We didn't anticipate that:-

(1) we would receive such a high volume of e-mails that we would need an extra staff member to read/screen them on.a full-time basis. Of course, we never got an extra staff member.

(2) some of our clients are serial e-mailers and e-mail us several times a week.

(3) a lot of the e-mails aren't relevant to the work that we do.

(4) some of the e-mails contain very inappropriate content. Luckily, most of these are picked up by the IT system.

Doing it via the office allows all the junk and crazies to be removed and also helps teachers not to be overcome.

Absolutely not. I'd rather my child was being taught by a teacher who wasn't distracted by the ridiculous emails that some parents send. The number of parents in our class WhatsApp who don't bother to read school letters and emails is quite high. We usually only get one email a week from the school anyway. I'd imagine if parents had free reign to ask about things that they've been given the info about already it would be quite excessive for the teacher.

I am a teacher and parents have our emails. They do email but it's not overly taxing. Work in a private school where I think this is the norm. Also parent to a DD who is still at school- have her teachers emails too. Thought it's what happens tbh !

My daughter's secondary publish all the teachers email addresses. Don't think I have used any other than form tutor and the MH team.