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.

It would be the work of a minute to configure an email server not to forward emails to clients between and . And to respond to any emails received with a policy email.

If you aren't doing your IT on the cheap.

That's before you get into the fact that emails can be delayed on their journey through the internet anyway.

Just pop a note at the top of the email saying something along the lines of "Apologies for sending this outside of your usual working hours; I am unable to access email during the school day. I do not expect a reply outside of your working hours."

All the suggestions about having a central email contact for certain types of issue are very sensible.

However, many schools encourage, or at least facilitate, email communication between parents and individual teachers. Once our addresses are known, it’s surprising what they are used for!

this is not ridiculous, can't believe anyone could think so.

It's like no one has ever read any mental health initiatives around this. It's proven people will still look and check their emails and therefore get stressed.

If you're busy at work between those times then don't you think the teachers are also at work and after would like to relax?

Also you've got to be quite inept to not understand how to just time your emails, it's automatic, program to send between 830-530 PROBLEM SOLVED.

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

I'm really concerned that your first thought for a missing child would be to send an email - not make a phone call.

Emails have always be designed to be dealt with at the convenience of the receiver. It's usual to expect that emails will not be dealt with outside of office hours. They are not a means of contact you use for urgent issues UNLESS you have as the sender have been specifically told to do so.

If the receiver is receiving urgent emails then the onus is on them to put an out of office with information on where the query should go instead. It is not the responsibility of the sender to double guess when it is or isn't okay to send something.

@LindaEllen

@buddyrun is not ridiculous here. Do you not understand how teachers work? they do go online because shockingly their workload extends, DH is up til 11pm most nights and over the top parents emailing late aren't going to help. It's human behaviour to read it and then think about it.

Be courteous, it isn't hard.

My DD's teacher has an email signature which says

"I have sent this email at a time convenient to me, please reply at a time convenient to you."

Which seems entirely reasonable to me.

I think they have a problem parent who sends 20 emails in the evening, the teacher might not open them until the morning but you don't know which are relevant until you open them.

[quote julietteb18]@LindaEllen

@buddyrun is not ridiculous here. Do you not understand how teachers work? they do go online because shockingly their workload extends, DH is up til 11pm most nights and over the top parents emailing late aren't going to help. It's human behaviour to read it and then think about it.

Be courteous, it isn't hard.[/quote]
Crazy idea, but maybe go online and close his emails. Unless you are going to tell us now that he is sending emails at that time too and needs to be on his email account for the same, hypocritical reason?

I have a little sympathy for the school here. I have often felt guilty when I’ve emailed my DD’s teacher at the weekend/9pm (because that is when I’ve had time to do it) and she has replied promptly! I’ve now got into the habit of writing “no need to reply until Monday” or the equivalent. Ultimately, it’s silly as the asymmetry is the great advantage of email over a phone call: you communicate when it’s convenient and they respond at a time convenient to them, with no need for any mutually convenient time to be found! Ultimately, it must be about setting expectations correctly and allowing everyone to use it in a sensible fashion.

I email whenever I get the chance/remember. I don’t ever expect a reply until working hours.

My daughter is having some complex problems with school at the moment so I need to be able to sit down, away from work and ringing phone, and concentrate - something I can’t do until I’m home in the evenings

I have been surprised that some teacher have emailed me back straight away and I’ve always thanked them profusely and explained that I’m just emailing at 8pm or whatever as that’s the only chance I’ve had all day and that I never expect them to reply outside their working hours

yanbu
the beauty of emails is that you don't have to read/answer immediately.
dh and I are at work during school hours and bar breaks don't have time to deal with school stuff during the day.
plus sometimes I need to discuss things with dh before we answer.

Bizarre. I switch off my emails so that I can't see the notifications weekends and evenings. If someone is continuing to work during these times then the best thing to do is ignore the emails until office hours.

They should have just said that staff only read their emails between 8:30 and 5:30 on weekdays. The whole point of emails, unlike phone calls or texts, is that you can send an email any time of the day or night and won't be disturbing anyone.

This is like the regular texting between 9pm-7am debate.

Some people think you shouldn't text then (or rather know which exact hours are acceptable to your recipient). Others think if people don't want to receive texts they should mute them or turn their phone off.

Why should parents have to set up delayed emails because teachers can't manage their time?

We can manage our time. We can’t manage the pressure coming from all angles. If I get an email from a parent late at night I feel obliged to reply, simply because I had a parent email me once on a Friday night after I had left work, I didn’t respond because I was at home. Something came up on the Monday so I didn’t get chance to reply until 11am, Iater found out that they had been in reception at 9am trying to put in a complaint and threatening to tell OFSTED 🙄 (my head gave them contact information) all because their year 10 son had left his coat in my classroom and she wanted it for the weekend - they eventually found it at his friends house. As a result of this I can’t sleep if I’ve not replied because I worry what will happen as a result.

I probably get 20 on an evening over the week because our school put all of our email addresses on the website. So whilst you might think your 1 email is harmless, it builds up! I wish my school would put this policy in place, I wish they would do it for staff too! The amount of emails we get after we have officially finished asking for stuff the next day is ridiculous

I do try to keep my email to work hours roughly simply because DS is very lucky to have great teachers and I found that if I sent an email in the evening or whatever they did email straight back so unless it’s urgent I wait now.

I would assume the school in this case has an issue with a small minority of parents emailing st all hours and complaining they don’t get a response as quickly as they want

Someone mentioned about boundaries further up, and I agree. People need to set their personal boundaries. I've worked in education, one of my LM's used to contact me out of hours for ridiculous things and expect. instant replies. I asked the person to stop, they didn't. I deleted the work email from my personal phone and made it clear I wouldn't be logging in out of hours. If I was needed in an emergency, those relevant people had my number.

I've done this in every single job regardless of if I've been employed, SE, freelance etc, it's never impacted any promotions. The state of my mh wellbeing starts with me.

I wasn't the HT or safeguarding so there was no requirement to be available 24/7.

Email addresses are a closely guarded secret at my dds primary. I truly had no idea it was the norm to be able to email your child's teacher

@TeenPlusTwenties

This is like the regular texting between 9pm-7am debate.

Some people think you shouldn't text then (or rather know which exact hours are acceptable to your recipient). Others think if people don't want to receive texts they should mute them or turn their phone off.

The way to think about it - you as a sender of email (or text) could be contacting 100 different individuals a day. It is massively unreasonable to be expected to know when is a convenient time for the receiver.

On the flipside, you as the receiver know what works for you - so you are responsible to mute/ turn off at the hours that don't work for you.

How silly. Most of us do that sort of admin in the evening when we have time. People should not necessarily expect a reply out of hours (although I guess during the day teachers re teaching so they are going to have to do it our of hours...like everyone else does with their jobs) but seriously. Doesn't help teachers' cause.

Stupid people should email when they wish the school can only set expectations about the hours in which emails will be responded to.

You can schedule email's, not a big deal.

The Execution I completely agree, but have seen enough threads on texting to know that approx. 50% of MN disagrees.

Newname With the greatest respect, I think you need some assistance from your school in feeling permitted to switch off. No way should you be feeling obliged to read and respond to parental emails all over the w/e just in case an idiot parent want to report you to Ofsted over a missing coat.

To add people who work in jobs outside of teaching also get numerous emails outside of hours asking for stuff. It is my day off today. If I looked I suspect I have about 50 emails! But I would be laughed at if I said not to email me on my day off! I have an out of office message on making it clear I won't be replying and how to get hold of me if urgent. Can't teachers do the same thing?