School asking parents to only email teachers during working hours

[cautiouscovidity]

We've had a message from DCs' (primary) school respectfully asking parents to only email the head and class teachers between 8:30-5:30 on school days and not during the evenings / weekends / holidays, for staff well-being reasons (they deserve protected downtime etc.).
AIBU to think that this is ridiculous? I work in a job where I don't always have access to a phone / computer during the working day and so, on the rare occasion that I need to contact a teacher, I tend to email in the evening at home or first thing before I get ready to leave. Obviously I don't expect them to reply out of working hours, or even to read it there and then, but I had never considered that it would be intrusive. In my job I get loads of emails at all times of the day and night and they just sit in my inbox until I am working!
Surely if it's impacting on their downtime so much, then they should just not check their emails in the evening and turn off notifications etc.

This approach from the school would really annoy me as a teacher.
8.30 to 4pm I am in class, and after that often in meetings. Quite simply it is easier to respond to emails in my time than let them build up and have to find time in an already packed day to reply.
My school are very reasonable and tell us we arent expected to respond in the evenings, and that we must respond in 2 working days, but leave it to us.
I always respond when an email comes in in the evening, but if it becomes a backwards and forwards conversation I leave it.
Email is like any other mail, it should be able to be sent at any time, if a teacher is having a night off, they just won't read or respond.

@spanieleyes

You might not think emails should be used for safeguarding matters but they are, even the police use them to notify schools of domestic violence incidents where school children are present. That's one of the reasons why we can't ignore emails out of hours.

That’s absolutely ridiculous! And I’m not getting at you. Quite the opposite.

Email is a completely unsuitable medium for that kind of critical communication. The stress over the risk of missing that kind of email must be immense. This has been very eye opening!

@spanieleyes

You might not think emails should be used for safeguarding matters but they are, even the police use them to notify schools of domestic violence incidents where school children are present. That's one of the reasons why we can't ignore emails out of hours.

If the police are sending through safeguarding matters through email its because its on an information sharing basis, you don't need to read that outside of work hours unless you want to. If a child is at risk and there is a need for immediate action there are clear procedures in place for direct handover to the relevant agencies. Its this sort of practice that causes unnecessary workplace stress.

You might not think emails should be used for safeguarding matters but they are, even the police use them to notify schools of domestic violence incidents where school children are present. That's one of the reasons why we can't ignore emails out of hours
The school should have a proper safeguarding procedure that doesn't involve class teachers having to check their emails 24/7 just in case someone has sent safeguarding information.
Most schools have way of contacting senior members of staff, including the designated leader, without the expectation that teachers are on call just in case.

Put it this way, if teachers picking up potential safeguarding emails is genuinely the reason for checking out of work emails, the implication is that any teacher not on their emails 24/7 is failing in their legal safeguarding duty. If a safeguarding email does go to a teacher at 9pm on a Wednesday night in a school where it's considered normal to be checking emails 'just in case', what should they be expected to do given they're not actually at work?

Email is a completely unsuitable medium for that kind of critical communication. The stress over the risk of missing that kind of email must be immense. This has been very eye opening!
No school I ever worked at has had standard class teachers (as opposed to the designated safeguarding lead or SLT) checking emails just in case a safeguarding situation is emailed across.
Every school I've been at has also warned against discussing sensitive information by email.
I find it a bit concerning any school would expect staff to be on call 24/7 just in case.

As I said earlier, if I was a Head I’d not have individual staff emails available.

I think the blurring of boundaries is damaging and potentially risky for all concerned @LolaSmiles

I was responding to the poster who said that safeguarding information was not sent by email, not implying that it was sent to class teachers.

There seem to be a number of separate issues none of which is to do with normal parents emailing out of office hours and none of which will be solved by preventing emailing at that times.

Firstly there are obnoxious parents who have unreasonable expectations of teachers.

Secondly some teachers are apparently expected to be on call 24-7.

This doesn't really make sense and is something you should be adressing with your school. If it's absolutely essential for you to constantly be checking your emails in the evening what happens when you go out for the evening? What happens if you don't have access to your email? It's just not practical. It's also obviously not necessary since some schools shut off their email systems 7pm- 7am.

I do think we should improve conditions for teachers but they should be able to function like other professionals. If people are sending abusive emails we should address that issue not expect everyone else to pretend like it's 1950.

No school I ever worked at has had standard class teachers (as opposed to the designated safeguarding lead or SLT) checking emails just in case a safeguarding situation is emailed across.

Oh thank god!

When I started at my school I was told that staff are expected to check emails out of school hours but didn't need to respond to them until they were in work. I've only ever worked in the one school do not sure if this is standard?

spanieleyes
It was more the implication that teachers can't ignore out of hours emails due to safeguarding that irked me because agencies keeping schools in the loop isn't a reason why people should be on their emails 24/7.
Emails come back to this in my opinion: 'what is the expectation of the person receiving this email?' If it requires an urgent response out of work hours then email isn't the appropriate format and there should be proper procedures for relevant staff. If it's information only and/or requires no immediate action then it is reasonable to expect it to be read during the working day, in which case there's no need for people to be on emails at all hours.

HandfulOfDust
SLT's unwillingness to address those sorts of issues at a former school was one reason I nearly quit teaching to go back to my former career. Instead I changed schools. Interestingly, I know a few career changers who've had little tolerance for some of the martyr expectations that some school leaders try to promote.

Hmmm are we at the same school 🙄?! We just got that kind of message too !

YABU.

It's not about you managing anyone else's downtime and your IT issues are not their problem.

In the age of smartphones I don't believe for one minute that you don't have access to emails or Internet (unless you literally live in the middle of nowhere with zero signal) after 5pm or on a weekend.

If you can post on MN at all hours of the day and night you can send a time appropriate email.

If you REALLY can't then drop them an email saying: thank you for this information due to the following reasons this will not be possible but feel free to respond when possible.

@LolaSmiles

I don't blame you. Expecting you to be checking your email to deal with essential safeguarding matters during the evening is absurd. No wonder we can't retain teachers if these are the expectations. I wouldn't stay in a job like that. I have my own family and own life.

@LolaSmiles
Sorry, I meant that SCHOOLS can't ignore out of hours emails, not individual class teachers! With DV notifications, we are expected to have the support in place as soon as the child comes into school the next day, if I didn't read my emails until later, the provision wouldn't be in place in time!

spanieleyes
That makes more sense. Sorry if I sounded sarcastic or irritable. Useless use of email is one of those topics that winds me up because some school approaches are so stupid.

HandfulOfDust
That school it wasn't safeguarding. It was all kinds of petty crap and they had a lot of staff fresh out of university who were keen to save the students from anyone over the grand old age of 25 (plus many sensible younger ones). The brown nosing at midnight, replying to emails with SLT copied in at 6am etc only contributed to issues with parent emails. Parents quickly found some staff would be on call 24/7, always on the homework app giving help etc and would complain that other teachers weren't willing to behave that way.
Naturally those promoting and reinforcing the culture continued to kid themselves that they were amazing for 'going the extra mile for the good of the children'. Personally, I think they'd have done a damn sight more for the good of the children if they had professional boundaries, didn't try to make their colleagues look bad and didn't reinforce an unpleasant culture that meant some children could go without subject specialists in sone KS3 because the staff were regularly leaving. 🤷‍♀️

@LolaSmiles
It was my use of the royal "we" that threw you☺️

Schedule your emails to go at 8am.

@LolaSmiles

Apart from creating absolutely ridiculous expectations from the teachers it's not helping the students. I used to tutor during my PhD and made the mistake of being too available at first. I ended up having perfectly intelligent students expecting responses at all hours of the day with stupid questions they could have found the answers to in the summary at the end of the chapter. Working stuff out for yourself is how you learn in my subject.

@mumda

Schedule your emails to go at 8am.

That has been posted several times.

The response has been

'won't'
'can't make me'
'it is your fault for reading them'
or 'cba' (all paraphrased)

I think you missed several “my email client doesn’t do that”

Think yourself lucky that you can email the teacher at all! We can only contact them via the school office. It is painful.

@FrippEnos To be fair emails don't need to be scheduled - it's a bizzare solution to an underlying problem that needs addressing separately. It's hardly unreasonable to expect schools to use their emails in the same way that every other professional organiation has been using them for the past 20 years; schools do need to operate within the 21st century. What isn't reasonable is for some parents to be sending unreasonable emails at any time of the day or night. Or for SLT to expect teachers to be checking their emails through out the evening for any reason.

@TheLastStarfighter

I think you missed several “my email client doesn’t do that”

FrippEnos doesn't want to hear that response, its been scheduled never to arrive.

I totally agree with you - and I'm a teacher!
Just don't expect a response outside of working hours & it's fine.

Imagine if we all could email, police, nurses, social workers at our whim. Imagine those lazy fuckers not getting back to us within 24 hours. I mean what are they doing that detracts from our stamping needs? I mean I get the the working day for teachers involved being present for up to 30 kids every 50mins but come on... what about when they go home? Once they geedtheirown children and lock them in their bedrooms theres at least 3 hours to answer my individual email? Because my child trumps all other children. I will put my foot down and stamp really hard until that teacher answers, I mean the amount they get paid, and the holidays. And I am the only parent who will do this. That's right, out of the 130 parents my child teacher has to deal with in secondary school, I am the only one who emails demanding an answer to my perfectly reasonable questions

Hey so what if I have a glass of wine first. Its damm hard being a parent. I went to school in 1987.