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.

Buddyrun - you are missing the point. I get e mails all day and night = think NHS. Some are v serious incidents but lets be honest - the staff on the ground have done the urgent necessary and the rest will wait till the morning. Ergo the same for teachers.

I sure as hell do not respond in the evening - they wait until the morning when I log in again.

I think most teachers have a few logical brain cells and know how to manage their time. I am not being lazy

I remember getting a shorty email from a parent on a Friday at 6pm and it really ruining my weekend. But ultimately I think it would be better to set expectations around responses. So say to parents- please remember staff won’t reply outside office hours of x-x. Then encourage your staff not to access their emails in evenings/weekends. The latter is difficult as most teachers work evenings and weekends and need their emails to access schemes of work they are sending between year group colleagues etc... but worth attempting.

If my DCs primary school stopped sending ParentMails to us at all hours of the night/weekend it would be a start...

@bogoffmda

Buddyrun - you are missing the point. I get e mails all day and night = think NHS. Some are v serious incidents but lets be honest - the staff on the ground have done the urgent necessary and the rest will wait till the morning. Ergo the same for teachers.

I sure as hell do not respond in the evening - they wait until the morning when I log in again.

I think most teachers have a few logical brain cells and know how to manage their time. I am not being lazy

You receive very urgent emails and ignore them for twelve hours? They don't sound very urgent. If they were urgent, you'd need to respond. That's what urgent means.

you can have fun panicking all night when the school don't respond when your child is missing...

If you're a teacher, please have a long, hard look at yourself for posting this. Seriously, that's repulsive.

A school should have proper out of hours emergency protocol if they need it. Not random teachers answering emails on personal devices.

[quote BuddyRun]@OchonAgusOchonO You might want to read the response I've already given. If a child in your child's class tested Covid positive and their parent emailed at 6pm to say so then I bet you'd expect to know before the next school day - correct? So, how do you think that will happen unless teachers check their email outside of school hours?[/quote]
I would assume a school exhibiting any level of competence would have a system in place for this.

For example: set up a dedicated email address for reports of covid (or for other urgent matters, if necessary). Let parents know that is the address they should use and one person monitors this on a rota basis, notifying whoever need to be notified; tell parents that if they are reporting a case to ensure they type COVID in capitals in the subject line; have a phone number parents can text covid reports to etc etc.

The solution is not to dictate how people should use a tool that is meant to be used asynchronously. Quite aside from anything else, there is no guarantee your email will arrive immediately . It usually does, but not always. For that reason, I would be reluctant to use email as a time-critical method of contacting people.

When I've emailed someone and it's urgent I mention it in the subject bit. Surely parents and staff should have common sense and do the same.

This sort of irrationality absolutely drives me crazy. Our school has a no emailing of teachers directly policy because of.... safeguarding. Apparently, it's to protect the teachers as they can't control what people email them etc. I did gently point out that it would be a lot easier for me to be very rude and aggressive in person, where no one could hear and the teacher would have no way of proving it, than via email.... But whatever.

Absolutely the school has the right to firmly tell parents that teachers will only respond to emails during specific times and within a set time frame (eg between 9-17:00 and within 2 working days), but telling me when I am allowed to email is ridiculous.

I don’t mind getting emails from parents in the evening. I didn’t reply unless it was a safeguarding issue or a quick reply though. It waited until the next day. But you'd only know it was a safeguarding issue if you read all the emails.

As a teacher I'd be very unimpressed that SLT thought I was incapable of answering emails at an appropriate time without it impacting on my downtime. I'm a grown adult I'm more than capable of answering an email at a time suitable to myself regardless of whether it landed in my inbox at 3am or 3pm hmm.

Good for you? Guessing it's spawned from that not being the case, and parents expecting replies out of hours if they email out of hours, which fair enough not everyone is happy doing.

I do agree though that it's probably been sent with the intent of trying to help foster a better balance for teachers, but they've gone the wrong way around it. Surely a better way to frame it would be that their inboxes will only be routinely monitored and emails responded to between certain hours, so not to expect a response out of hours. What would people normally do if something was urgent? I doubt people would normally be emailing teachers.

@MrsTerryPratchett

you can have fun panicking all night when the school don't respond when your child is missing...

If you're a teacher, please have a long, hard look at yourself for posting this. Seriously, that's repulsive.

A school should have proper out of hours emergency protocol if they need it. Not random teachers answering emails on personal devices.

I'm not a teacher - but this is YOUR suggestion. YOU are saying teachers shouldn't respond out of hours. Except when you think they should - and somehow they're supposed to know.

Sorry if it's been mentioned already, but there's also the issue that while you may well send an email at a certain time, you don't actually have any control over when it arrives. It's not always instantaneous, depends on wifi/mobile connection, servers etc.
So YANBU, the school most definitely is.

Seems ridiculous, I cant always do personal emails during my working day.
The obvious solution is for teachers not to check or respond to work emails out of working hours.
Having said that i have emailed teachers in the evening and got an immediate reply, I'm always surprised by it and dont expect it at all.

Parents sending only in office hours only - weird

Teachers will reply in office hours only - personally acceptable

I’m a teacher and yes that is silly.

I don’t always have time to do emails in the day so check and write them in the train home. Or In the evenings if I need to.

The school needs to tell staff not to check emails rather than parents not to send them. There is a function on many email providers to send at a specified time which I use sometimes.

I just put "For Monday morning" in the subject box and send it whenever I get a minute. I would never expect a reply out of hours.
That said I have had teachers email me at 11.00pm at night before.

YOU are saying teachers shouldn't respond out of hours. Except when you think they should - and somehow they're supposed to know.

For goodness sake. I work in housing and we deal with deaths, sexual assaults, fires, emergency repairs, harassment, domestic violence, lifts going out, fire alarm failures, child abuse and similarly urgent matters. We have a system. One that doesn't involve the privacy issues of answering emails on personal devices, nor does it involve every staff member checking email out if hours.

It's not rocket science.

Dds school have set up an address to report covid cases out of hours. This is an easy thing to do. I’m not a computer whizz, but could the school not set up an auto reply that as it is after 5.30 pm, the mail may not be looked at until the next time the teacher is in school / working?

That's a good idea Emmy. I'll add that to mine.

Teachers need to respond to urgent emails outside of school hours (i.e. emails about positive covid cases)

Surely a better system is to have a central email address for that specifically, and then either someone could be 'on call' and check it etc and then make the necessary phone calls or whatever, rather than everyone having to read all just in case.

A central email would also be a lot easier to manage surely. If someone is off poorly, or loses access to their emails, or can't check then it's a single point of failure. A shared mailbox is better for BC.

I normally come down on the side of schools, but I also think asking parents to only send emails in school hours is impractical and unnecessary.

Schools should have very clear ways to handle Covid reporting.
They should have phone contacts for their teachers to say don't come into school, or a place where teachers can look if needed.

Parents need to be able to send emails when convenient to them, but school should make clear that teachers are not expected to respond out of school hours with an e.g. 2 working day response window.

@Feefifo9

I remember getting a shorty email from a parent on a Friday at 6pm and it really ruining my weekend. But ultimately I think it would be better to set expectations around responses. So say to parents- please remember staff won’t reply outside office hours of x-x. Then encourage your staff not to access their emails in evenings/weekends. The latter is difficult as most teachers work evenings and weekends and need their emails to access schemes of work they are sending between year group colleagues etc... but worth attempting.

Most teachers I know have a secondary email or use Office/Google. Other schools allow for remote login to shared drives. Collaboration can seamlessly continue without the constant interruption from emails.

IIrc there is also a way on the school email accounts to "mute" from certain addresses and even words outside your hours. (been away for a couple of years so cannot check how)

@BuddyRun - In order to find out which emails are urgent, they need to read ALL the emails that come in (because teachers don't psychically know which emails are urgent without reading them).

Yes, it is amazing that you can know what's in an email without reading it. That is amazing. Genuinely, truly amazing.

I'm starting to wonder have you ever used email. You do know that there is such a thing as a subject field? If you send an urgent email, then you fill in the subject (that should be done anyway) to reflect the urgency of the email.

@BuddyRun

You can very easily set up an email with a delayed send - so you send it at 8pm but it won't arrive until 8.30am the next day. Why do you think teachers should get emails 24/7 because you don't want to spend five seconds setting up a delayed send. What a ridiculous problem to have.

Wow, do you even realise how you come across?

I WFM as a freelancer and get emails all through the day and night. When I 'clock off' in an evening, my computer gets turned off and I don't check my emails until the next morning. That's all the teachers have to do, as I assume it's a different account to their personal one. Just don't have that account on their 'home' devices! Or at least mute notifications/don't look at them.

Setting up a 'delayed send' is bloody ridiculous when the school could simply have said that emails will only be read during working hours.

Have a look at your tone before you reply to a poster who is only asking a simple question.