letters from school

[agnesf]

Is it unreasonable to expect schools to get into the digital age? I don't know anyone who hasn't either got a home computer or smartphone yet our school still persists in sending home a printed out newsletter which gets scrumpled up in a heap at the bottom of the bag.

Even more annoying are important additional letters such as those needed to book appointments at parents evening/ get tickets for school concerts ("donation" of £3 required). These have often not made it home or even worse not even been given out by the class teacher.

Is mine the only school that still thinks its in the 1970's. Its really annoying plus in these days of increasingly short resources seems to be really inefficient.

emails don't get lost! if a server goes down the emails are stored and sent when it's back up. And virtually all email systems have built in redundancy these days. the argument that you may not know you were sent it because you gave out the wrong email address is ludicrous - surely you would notice you weren't getting emails from the school when they were expected because they asked you for an email address. paper based is just as vulnerable to that anyway, if not more so, as if the TA forgets to put the letter in my kids bag or he loses it, I'll never know it was sent either (like the party invitations that get lost when not sent via email). personal responsibility applies surely?

Emails don't get lost but they do sometimes forget to add your name to lists. We were not sent a bill at school recently as they forgot to add our email address to the list and they also forgot to add our name when they sent the reminders. I only found out when I chased them as I hadn't received the bill and by this time they had (incorrectly) decided we didn't want the extra lessons.
All systems have some flaws but at least with emails you have proof that it hasn't been sent (or has been sent for those who deny knowledge).

Forago

Believe what you will, if you really want to believe that emailing is infallible then so be it.

We've just moved to ParentMail. I ran a theatre trip last week. Four weeks previously, letters were sent out via ParentMail. Getting the reply slips back was a total nightmare, and I think I handed out nearly as many paper copies of the letter as I would have done without ParentMail.

It didn't help that one of the parents had told all her friends that ParentMail was a scam and you shouldn't open any email from them

Parentmail has a large start up cost and there are still quite a few families who can't afford internet access etc depending on the school. It wouldn't work in some more deprived areas unfortunately.

We get text messages about everything, even to tell us we have an email about something to long to put in a text message

I read all the text messages

I think the price is possible off putting but also change can be difficult for some schools and overall it is a better way of communicating

Get a text about parents evening and told to look at email and reply for your slot it is a lot quicker than letters going to and fro in school bags

Eviltwins we don't get stuff by paper very often and if we do we get a text to let us known it is being sent home through student so it doesn't get forgotten.
The text though is a prompt to let us know we need to look at website or email and so someone telling me it was a scam wouldn't really work

We use texts as well, but I think we're trying to move away from paper entirely. I know this was just the first time for me, but it really didn't work! Perhaps it's just a case of parents getting used to it. Mind you, first lesson after the mail had been sent, I talked to the students (yr 10) about it and got a lot of blank faces and "my parents didn't get an email" stories. I did have to ask if they are normally aware of the content of their parents' email inbox!

Emails from some styles of mass Email lists do go astray here.

That is to say they get as far as DH's horribly complicated Linx box and don't get forwarded to me.

This is not schools (or this case county choirs fault and I have apologised for asking him to resend things DH couldn't find), it's mine for marrying a geek.

Our school doesn't send out paper letters unless you ask.

Everything gets posted up on the school website, and paper letters given to those who request them - when they started doing it at the beginning of they year the sent out a reply slip for parents to choose which method they wanted. It's cut the paper/photocopying by about 80%.

I prefer it that way, my house is a bit of a black hole for bits of paper and school letters vanish the moment they cross my threshold. I can't lose them when they're posted on the school website

I didn't say email was infallible I said it doesn't, under anything but exceptional failure situations, get lost. I.e it is stored on a server until a valid path or the destination address is available and is then sent to whatever address is contained in the header. I believe this because I know how email works and about the SMTP protocol and others.

Whether the people who they are sent to give out the correct addresses, set up their content filtering correctly, bother to read them or are organised enough to read an email and put the info on a diary or immediately print out a copy is of course another story - and beyond the school or anyone's control.

YABU.

I'm from the south Wales valleys where only around 45 per cent of homes have internet access. To communicate solely by email would be a serious disadvantage to many.

My poor niece had trouble recently when she was given a piece of homework that required visiting a website that required the use if flash. The only internet access she has is on her dad's smart phone which doesn't run flash, she could not visit the library as his was over the weekend when it is closed. She got very, very upset that she wasn't able to her homework. :-(

Thats also a very good point about timeliness. Our school operates a ludicrous first come first served process for extracurricular clubs, that have limited places. The forms used to be put in the bags and then whoever handed in the rlynslips first got the place. Of course all the parents who pick their kids up at 3.30 would immediately fill them in and all the places would be allocated on the same day, before I had even got home from work and seen the forms. I even used to drive up to the school that evening to hand slips in but my kids still rarely got a place.

Now they are emailed in the morning, just as I am about to have a coffee break at work, while others are still busy with their mornings, and suddenly I am at an advantage for a change!

That's bad. We send out letters for after school clubs with a cut off date on them, priority goes to children who already do the club and then any remaining spaces are names out of a hat.

evil - it works in other schools so i suspect it was the parents getting used to it for the first time.

We don't have the ability to pay by cash or cheque either, we have to use credit or debit card to pay for anything relating to the school, dinner money, locker key replacement, school trips, calculator. I think you can