Do other schools do this? Drives me bonkers.

[PudULike]

In the olden days (like last year) my son's school, if it had any consent or information forms it needed parents to complete, sent a physical version home in their schoolbag. This year the world has moved on so now they just email us the form - but not as an online form. And they ask us to email it back. So they send an attachment of the form scanned from its physical version. And now the way parents are meant to complete them is to save the attachment, print it at a sensible size, fill it in, photograph it and attach it as an email back to the school. What a palaver. Does my nuts in.

That is so annoying!!! They need to invest in making the forms available for parents to sign electronically and then you can email them back to school. I hate these half arsed “evolutions” that create more faff!

This sounds like a your specific school thing.

That’s ridiculous. Tell them you don’t have access to a printer and get them to give you a paper copy to save half that palaver until they get out of the dark ages and use one of the many electronic systems available to them.

My DDs school once sent out a physical letter with a link to click on to take you to a Google form to complete.

My son's primary school had form for this. Their other trick was during covid lockdown, to make worksheets, photograph them and stick them up on Classroom as an image! Used to drive my nuts, You are making a worksheet anyway, put it on Google Forms from the start!

🤣

Ew, hate that!

Our school just has like 4 different communication methods but at least they’re all straightforward. They’ve just made the change from one central place (Iris/parentmail) where you could get messages, make payments, fill in forms etc. Now apparently we’re doing a new messaging app, emails into our personal email addresses, texts from teachers (!), and the homework app has messaging too. Keep missing stuff! Definitely a downgrade.

I want to live in the days of book bag full of paper notes!!

We had years of this at secondary school (several years ago, tech has moved on), but it was easy for me to do at lunchtime at work and I didn't mind it as it meant they never got lost and I had a copy. Nowadays I'd expect an electronic form but there may be added costs where an official signature is needed eg consents rather than preferences. I still get quite a lot of forms from third parties to fill in as part of my work that are sent as word/pdf to be printed/signed/scanned before returning.

Could you not just send an email message saying you have no access to a printer, please accept this message as confirmation of consent?
School comms are seriously irritating yes these days. I think they just have so much more to deal with nowadays, it’s relentless. Pet peeve is the online booking windows for parents evening that exist for an hour during wirking hours- always hit max capacity within 15 minutes. Just why???

That is really annoying! My DDs brownies used to do that, so much faff compared to a physical form.
We also don’t have a printer as ours broke a couple of years ago and we never print anything so didn’t bother replacing- if desperate I can print things on days I’m in the office but wouldn’t want to be always printing off school forms there!

This is my pet peeve! DC’s old school did this a couple of times, second time I actually recreated it in MS forms and sent it back suggesting they use it as a template. They went back to paper…

I think a lot of families won't have printers. When mine were at primary school (10+ years ago) there was a lot of homework where you could produce something on a computer, print it out and send it in, so we always had one and have continued to have one as we do find it useful but I quite often hear friends say they don't because they no longer need them with everything being online. Scanning is very easy with a phone but you have got to be able to print it out in the first place. I hated the paper forms that were always getting lost, crumpled, wet though.

Our school sends the forms to be completed electronically, but all the info about the trip/event is on the form. Once the deadline for completing the form passes, parents can no longer access it so I can't check about drop off/pick up times, do they need packed lunch etc. I've told them that a couple of times but they don't seem to want to change it so the info is available elsewhere.

Seems I was wrong. Lots of bonkers examples here.

It’s annoying but my solution is to have a photo of my signature saved somewhere, which I then insert into the document in word (or whatever format it is in). Then send back. No printing out required.

Ask them to employ someone vaguely competent and produce a mobile friendly form. Google forms or Microsoft forms will do it really easily.

So annoying. They could just use Microsoft forms.

Though I can also add my signature to .pdfs. I now have an edit .pdf function at work which saves me so much time. Before that I used to save .pdfs, open them in Word, edit and save as a .pdf again. But it doesn't work for badly copied documents.

That's specific to your idiot school, thank God!

Can’t you Docusign them?

I hate this. Not school but I screenshot. Use draw to write on it like a chimp with a crayon. Then I send back with a rant about dyslexia / learning difficulties and them being un accessible to people with disabilities.

I get some satisfaction at the imaged horror of my size 50 font scrawl and hope they find it as hard to read as I did to write. I have no printer. No pdf editor

I don't see how schools can assume that all parents have access to a printer. Surely your school at least offers physical forms for those who don't?

Hahaha NO, I would not be doing that!

@ResusciAnnie this is me too ! I am at peak digitalisation and now agree wholeheartedly with my DM who has been saying for years it doesn’t make life easier .
I spend my days at work trying to work out what platform to use / what channel I saw a message on and then log off to do the exact same thing at the kitchen table !
I could go on but it’s just likely to be an incoherent rant as I am too overwhelmed by life to to coherent .

High school uses parent pay for consent for most things. There is a section to add medical information and consent for photographs for every 'event'. We get the odd letter if the trip is outside of school and requires collection elsewhere or additional kit or children to leave school at a different time to normal, or if it's selected students only, rather than whole class.

Primary school communication was shocking. Either none existent or complete bombardment of emails, every day about the same thing.