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.

But a number of teachers on this thread have said that there are parents who don't regard email as asynchronous; that these parents regard emails as synchronous and are demanding & rude when teachers don't answer straight away.

They need to be firmly told a time frame when teachers will reply and that needs to be adhered to.

If any parent sends an email at 3am looking for an immediate response, then they’re absolutely deluded and need to be told that.

Has your organisation expressly told them not to?

Thing is, most businesses and their clients (also usually businesses) understand the concept of 'business hours'. It could be that parents at the OP's school, do not, and are demanding teachers answer emails synchronously and all the time ...

We don't now what has caused the OP's school to set this boundary - if every teacher is dealing with emails from the parents of every pupil they teach (and think about separated/divorced parents doubling the potential communications), maybe this school needed to find a way to "train" their parents into appropriate communications.

Thing is, most businesses and their clients (also usually businesses) understand the concept of 'business hours

And they also understand the concept of email.

Doesn’t matter when it’s sent. Don’t expect an answer outside of working hours.

If a client wanted to be able to contact us out of hours we would charge them extra.

Lucky you.

The many different types of businesses we work with work in many different ways. Matters not a jot when they send, they’ll be answered at a time that suits us.

The marketing manager who sent most of her emails past 10pm on a Saturday night springs memorably to mind.

If any parent sends an email at 3am looking for an immediate response, then they’re absolutely deluded and need to be told that

Can you just imagine a parent posting in AIBU that a teacher told them they're a 'loon'? All the teacher-envy would just pour out ...

It strikes me that regardless of when people should or shouldn’t be sending an email (a concept I still think entirely misses the point of email), there is still a potential easy answer for affected teachers.

Couldn’t you set up an email filter that shunts emails from parents into a separate folder. Check that folder only when you want to.

Yes it might be possible to train parents to do what you want, but at least that way you have a safety net, so if you are then working in the evening and wanting to get emails from colleagues and not from parents, you can.

Well, I would advise putting it more diplomatically than that obviously

I would think very urgent communication (ie you needed help or an answer to a problem within a matter of hours) would necessitate a phone call.
Any other business that you send as an email is totally at the risk of the receiver not noticing, not receiving, or taking time to answer it.
I would think most emails that parents send teachers dont require an immediate response. (I cant think of any kind of emergency where your child class teacher would be the first port of call)

And just as we all know teachers dont just work 9-3.30, lots of other people at work (within normal office hours) cant access or send personal emails.

I probably would have the facility to if I needed to but often dont get a chance as I am not using a computer or phone for work.....so i may end up sending a non urgent email at 7pm for example. When school send out parent consultation bookings for example, often I dont see these for a couple of hours and by the time I go to book they are nearly all gone (from people who have immediate access to a phone or pc)

@Belladonna12

If you don't want to get work emails out with working hours, then that's on you to sort by not accessing your work emails. Don't have them pushing though to your phone. Don't have them on your phone or set the rules on your phone to decide what comes through and when.

And what if your colleagues do need to contact you urgently?

If it's really urgent they would phone. But only if someone else couldn't deal with whatever query had come up and that wouldn't happen after 5 anyway. Otherwise it is when I'm next in work, unless I happen to have checked my email before then.

My work respect home/work balance though of their staff and don't expect anyone other than the partners to be checking email whilst off. And even they say it's detrimental to their mental wellbeing and have tried to limit their email responses to clients out of hours as it only reenforces the idea that they can be contacted 24/7

"If a client wanted to be able to contact us out of hours we would charge them extra."

Ah yes! And that's the difference. A teacher's time is perceived as cheap - and therefore disrespected.

wish we could bloody charge!

@TheKeatingFive

Thing is, most businesses and their clients (also usually businesses) understand the concept of 'business hours

And they also understand the concept of email.

Doesn’t matter when it’s sent. Don’t expect an answer outside of working hours.

That might have been the prevailing thought at one time but nowadays I think it is accepted that if you send people an email out of hours, some people will feel hassled and that a reply is expected from them. That may not be the intention, but that is what happens and consequently many people are avoiding doing that.

They’re still trying to pass the responsibility for setting boundaries/inbox managing to parents rather than themselves. That’s trying to dictate the terms no matter how nicely you do it
They're asking for a spot of consideration, which isn't exactly awful.

I do some of my planning after DC are in bed. This will mean logging into my emails to check things from the day.
Thankfully most parents at my school are reasonable, but in previous schools they weren't and it was horrible having to do my own planning whilst strategically trying to ignore the fact that Mrs Blogs has decided to send yet another silly email complaining about some non-issue because I knew that by 9.30am she'd already have been on teh phone complaining about the same non-issue with the added entitlement of feeling qualified to say I'm crap at my job for not addressing her 'urgent' email the previous day.

Some people are arseholes.
Most people aren't.

I agree the school have gone about it the wrong way, but I do think it's reasonable for schools to outline expectations regarding parental contact.

Personally, it should be something like this:

1. As a school we have decided that a reasonable window for staff to be checking emails is A-B
2. As a school we have decided that parents should expect a reply within 48 hours / 3 working days / some other timeframe that accounts for the fact that a teacher's main job isn't doing email admin
3. Please ensure emails are directed to the most appropriate person and that you are mindful of what warrants direct email contact because sending pissy emails about the fact you want a seating plan change within 2 hours, demanding class changes due to a friendship squabble over the weekend, you want to complain the teacher didn't answer DC questions at 9pm the day before a deadline, are utterly furious that your DC has been given a detention for 'just asking a question' (or any other misleading version of events), or any other tiny issue that would generate a Mumsnet level of froth is simply a huge waste of staff time that could be better spent planning and marking and dealing with pastoral issues
4. For urgent issues, please contact the school office who will pass your message to the appropriate member of staff.

And just as we all know teachers dont just work 9-3.30, lots of other people at work (within normal office hours) cant access or send personal emails.

They don't need to access it during working hours though. You can schedule the time that the email is sent. If I type one in the evening, I schedule it to go at 9 a.m. You can do that on Google mail or outlook and every other email system I know.

Can you just imagine a parent posting in AIBU that a teacher told them they're a 'loon'? All the teacher-envy would just pour out ...

If someone posted on AIBU 'I emailed the teacher at 3am and didn't get a response immediately' everyone would call them a loon and you know it. Obviously a teacher isn't going to literally call anyone a loon but they would definitely tell them that it's unreasonable to expect a 24-7 direct line to a teacher.

I'm not sure sending an email at 3am to 99% of people in the same time zone as you would warrant an immediate response!

@ConfusedBear @CallmeAngelina since email and online working became an expectation of my work (I'm a teacher), I've always said I need to be provided with school devices for anything that might involve children's personal data*. My own laptop is used by my children so can't necessarily be assumed to be available for my school work and I can't guarantee the security measures on it are high enough to protect school data. Likewise my personal mobile - it's mine and if I want to hand it to my children to take photos etc. then I will. I'm not prepared to take responsibility for dealing with cookies, email notifications popping up and revealing confidential info etc. so I don't use it for school stuff. Every school I've worked at has managed to find me a device of some sort if they've wanted me to do confidential work at home.

*preparing resources, displays, planning (minus names) and plenty of other things get done on my own laptop.

Imagine if schools could charge parents for emails being sent outside normal hours and expecting an immediate response, would probably solve the funding crisis!

@ineedaholidaynow

Imagine if schools could charge parents for emails being sent outside normal hours and expecting an immediate response, would probably solve the funding crisis!

Imagine if you could get our education authority to stop sending them out with a financial penalty if they do. That would make a difference to their coffers.

Ah yes! And that's the difference. A teacher's time is perceived as cheap - and therefore disrespected.

Um, no. I don't know of a single business that doesn't accept email outside of working hours, let alone one that would charge you for sending them an email at a certain time. It's nothing to do with respect. It's normal business practice in 2020.

[quote BuddyRun]@MrsTerryPratchett If you could use common sense then that would be fine in the morning. I can't understand how so many people on here think teachers should know what's urgent and what isn't without reading it. Teachers should just stop responding to you outside of work hours and you can have fun panicking all night when the school don't respond when your child is missing...[/quote]
Your comments are both repetitive and ridiculous. Obviously if there was an urgent thing to report, such as, about covid symptoms you would email the main school office/head teacher. Not the class teacher! Anything parents email to the class teacher can be left until the class teacher is ready to open emails. The school needs to manage this, not put the onus on the parents to set up delayed emails or to only email in school hours. Ridiculous.

But there’s lots of evidence on this thread that parents don’t follow the requested procedure and just email class teachers for whatever.

Obviously if there was an urgent thing to report, such as, about covid symptoms you would email the main school office/head teacher. Not the class teacher!

You’d think so, wouldn’t you.

I totally agree. We had this announced at the school I work at. The world has gone nuts and I think teachers are not understanding how email is supposed to be used! It's not a chat app. It's email. It's not time dependant. The most ridiculous thing to ever come out of schools. Maybe they're losing the plot due to covid stress