Stupid rule about sending school an email

[Winebomb]

So preparing to write an email to my sons school about snack times (see my other thread) but just remembered we got a newsletter the first week of school stating:

"If you want to email the class teacher it must be sent between the hours of 8am and 5pm, any emails sent outside of this time will not be responded to"

Now I get there are some parents who are batshit, and think that if they email the teacher at 11pm they will have a response personally at the school gates the following morning, when they drop off their precious little snow flakes.

But isn't sending emails like writing a letter. I will write it at a convienient time, it may have been written at 11pm at night. But I am not batshit and expect it to be read either the next working day or at least the next working day afterwards after it's been delivered.

I work in the private sector and receive/send loads of emails post 5pm, and the same rules apply. Who are these parents who are just being bonkers???

All I can think of is writing my email and timing it in Outlook to be sent within the allotted time. But it just seems pointless.

Sorry probably answered my own AIBU and this is turning into more of a rant! But really!?!? Who are these people...

Huh? If you have internet on your phone then you have email access on your phone, surely? That's how mine works, anyway. I don't need any special settings or an app.

You'll be accessing email via the email program/app which came preloaded with the phone.

You can download and use other programs/apps - there are hundreds available. So you can use the pre-loaded app for your personal email addresses, and then a different app for work related ones (i.e. the work email address) which you can choose when to look at and you'd be in blissful ignorance until you decided to check it.

Nope. 5.30pm is my time with my child. I may work later than that when she is asleep, but that is up to me. My boss has no business directing me to respond to email after the end of my directed time. My workload outside of core school hours is for me to manage and it is for me to decide when I will reply to parents. If I am snowed under at work and leave at 4, the email may have to wait a day or so

So? 5.30 is your time with your child. Someone else's time with their child/partner/tv/hobby or whatever might be 3 or 5 or 7.30 or any other arbitrary time. There's nothing special about 5.30. Workload outside of core hours being personal is exactly my problem with these rules. I choose to do it after 10pm. That's why I didn't understand why 5 could be considered fine but not 6. One is no more irritating than the other, it's both a ban or an expectation on replying that's the problem.

We don't have core hours at the school I work at anyway (hence me being on here at 9am! ) We're a 24/7 school so we all have different duty hours on different days.

badbadbunny - no, I don't have anything like that. I just go on safari and enter the webmail address. It's just like any other website.

Manic having immediate access to work emails on a personal phone suggests there aren't sufficient security measures in place. The phone goes missing and anyone who accesses it gets access to those emails.
There are ways round that, but I'm guessing the average school isn't great at implementing appropriate measures.

Engaged parents are a double edged sword. In my recent experience, the school with the highest number of nitpicking emails from parents was definitely the school with the best student outcomes (attainment and progress), to give a completely unscientific piece of anecdata.

I wonder if that's because the parents are on their kids' backs to do their homework, revise, etc. to keep the pupil on their toes, or because parents are on the teachers' backs when they think the teacher is making mistakes to keep the teacher on their toes, or a mixture of both??

Whereas I would much rather deal directly with parents rather than through an intermediary. I don't want office staff explaining tiers of entry choices. I am better at it.

ICO guidance
ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1563/ico_bring_your_own_device_byod_guidance.pdf

no, I don't have anything like that. I just go on safari and enter the webmail address. It's just like any other website.

So you're choosing to check your emails. The comments on here are about teachers getting "pinged" at all hours that new emails have arrived and them not wanting the notifications.

Our school has a similar rule and it is because we can all access our school emails at home

I'd be uncomfortable with that if I was a parent, unless they are only accessed from a secure device. There must be a fair amount of confidential stuff in them.

We are expressly forbidden from having work emails on any personal equipment. We have work phones, which are passworded when issued, and work laptops, which are also passworded. Then there's another, different, password to access the work network. If you want to access the client database, which is web based, that has its own password etc, which is different again. It's a disciplinary matter to disclose your passwords to anyone!

All the kit is set up so that it logs you out if you leave it unattended for what seems like about 30 seconds, just in case you're working from home or somewhere in the community, and someone happens to catch a glimpse of confidential information about a client.

We have access to some stuff that schools are likely to have, eg safeguarding and health information and I'd be bloody uncomfortable thinking that emails like that could be on someone's personal phone and easily accessible.

Our school was very effective at resetting expectations. 30 parents, 20 of them PFB parents. All either used to blow-by-blow written nursery accounts of the day, childminder's or family member's very personal contact or looking after the child themselves. Then school. Weekly newsletter for all 500 kids with 2 sentences per year group specific to that class.

They invited parents to the classroom for a meet the teacher and see the classroom morning early on. Afterwards, all email got filtered by admin who pointed the eager parent to the parent teacher evening in October unless it was really urgent or important. Realising each parent has 15 minutes, we all learned quickly to reduce queries to the truly essential.

It is a very nurturing and caring school, with an outstanding OFSTED rating and waiting lists as long as your arm. I am glad they let us down quickly and could crack on with teaching rather than allow me (and others) to discuss the seating arrangements, the amount of sugar on their snacks and the dangers of the climbing frame. I would have done and by the sound of it so would OP.

Pengwynn - Of course not. Sorry, I'm confused, I think we've got crossed wires.
I said at some point that my own boss' line is 'no reply to be expected to an email sent after 6'.
Somebody replied and said something like, 'how can they expect you to reply at 5.30?'
As the OPs head's rule of 5 had seemed to be taken to be ok, I asked why 5.30 was any more of a problem than 5 or 6 as all of those times seem to me to be within a normal working time frame. That's all. As long as there's no expectation then there's no problem.

Absolutely ridiculous! It should be fine to send an email at any time and teachers should respond when they get a chance within normal working hours. If teachers have work emails coming through to their personal mobiles then that's their choice.

Unfortunately I have had frequent email correspondence with teaching staff over the years. Two children with SEN, I have sent email all different times of the day and night and have received emails from teachers at 10-11pm before. It has rarely been a consideration, the timing of the email, as I see an email as a request not a demand for a response, to be dealt with at the convenience of the recipient and always worded politely and respectfully.

I was also a school governor and our school business related emails were sent in the evening almost exclusively to all members, it was never an issue because the meetings were also held in the evening and included staff. It is understood by reasonable people that an email to a teacher may not get a response for a few days (or at all), an unreasonable person will still be unreasonable during the hours of 8 to 5.

I sent an email to the Head of dds school at 11pm last night, it is concerning a very difficult matter and we were instructed to email her directly, it took me a few hours to compose, due to the safeguarding concerns it relates to. I have set out my expectations for a response as the issue is time sensitive. I would not expect the Head to read it until this morning.

In fact, could this not be a safeguarding/confidentiality issue? I'm not sure that teachers having their school email on their phones is a good idea and it may even be a breach of the data protection act. Are the schools actually checking that each teachers' phone is properly secured, i.e. password protected? There could be personal information on unsecured phones. Perhaps we need a different discussion about whether teachers should only be able to access the school email system via a school computer/device which is under the control of the school's IT department? That would end the argument as then teachers would only access the system when they're in school or when using a school-provided device.
Absolutely KazzyHoward

my boss was being woken up in the night by her iPad pinging

I'd have been minded to show him where the power button was!

badbadbunny Yes, I'm choosing to. My query was in response to people who said that personal devices shouldn't be able to get onto work emails whereas I thought that any device with internet would do it. It was a logistical question, not a complaint. I'm a total technophobe and wouldn't know how to set up a pinging alert for love nor money. But my optimal working hours are usually after midnight (though I tend to use a laptop not a phone of course).

But I think an expectation for teachers who don't want to get emails in the evening to turn off their notifications would be more easily and reasonably achieved than an expectation not to send an email at a convenient time.

For a while I had emails pinging to my phone, until a new parent came along who had a midnight email habit that would ping me awake.

It was quite easily resolved by removing the email from my phone, and in fact I liked being no longer on tap. For urgent things the office would call my mobile (e.g. I was on a course and there was an incident) or people had to use the internal phones instead of expecting constant replies to questions all day.

Pengwynn Yes, definitely agree with that

I think if you have sent a time sensitive email re a safeguarding issue, you need to have made sure the Head knows you have sent it. Unless they were forewarned, which it sounds like they were from your post.

In this case Peng the Head will be aware it's coming as the issue was raised in person the night before and the class teacher asked us to send an email to the head. As it is a time sensitive issue it needs to be read today. Generally I don't have a particular expectation of reading/response time. I recall worrying about a Staff member emailing me after 10pm not in reply but to tell me about something, I replied in the morning