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.

@AppleKatie

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

Ha ha yes, quite

I’ve sent emails to teachers out of school hours before, but having had one teacher who replied promptly in weekends and evening, I now add a line about not needing a reply until normal working hours.

Like pp, I think it’s reasonable to tell parents that their email won’t be responded to outside of working hours, but less reasonable to ask parents not to send emails outside working hours.

I wouldn’t expect a reply to even an extremely urgent out of hours email until working hours started either. I wouldn’t expect a teacher to be constantly checking their emails in case a pupil has gone missing / been arrested / got Covid etc etc.

Incidentally, I have no idea how to do a delayed send of emails. I usually send emails from my phone, I’ve just been having a look at all the email settings I can find, and I can’t see any settings that allow delayed sending.

I would be emailing back

Thank you for your email, whilst I understand your motives I don’t feel it’s fair to ask parents to manage your teachers workload, or downtime. I am unable to email during those rimes as I work and am unable to undertake any private business at work.

Can I respectively suggest this issue is best resolved by you working with your staff and assuring them that is it acceptable for them to turn email notifications off at 5.30 and on again at 8.30am b

Thank you

A parent may work shift work? Or any other reason, a teacher cannot check their emails at midnight if they don't want, what is wrong with sending one anytime?

To demand a reply immediately or outside office time is rude but I dont check my work emails at midnight either so I dont care if a client emails me at 2am I won't answer, simples

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

This is just daft. Surely the school have set up a separate way of pupils allerting them to a positive covid case rather than emailing the individual teacher. If a teacher had to suddenly self isolate they should be recieving a phone call not a random email.

Um, no. Part of being a professional is managing your time and taking responsibility for your own mental health as far as possible. Like not checking emails outside of working hours if you don't have the self-control not to respond immediately.

That’s bizarre. I get emails at all hours of the day and night - because people have different working patterns to me, are in countries with time difference etc. They can send them when they like, I’ll look at them in my office hours.

With my working hours I have to send emails out of hours, when emailing the school I add a sentence saying something about not expecting a reply out of hours.

what utter rubbish - I work three days a week, my working days are stated in every email signature, and set an out of office for when I am - err - out of office.
Maybe the school should explain how "out of office" works to their staff?
But failing that, as PP has suggested, preface emails with "I am not expecting a response outside of your working hours but presumably like you I work during the day and do not spend my working hours composing personal emails."

That does sound ridiculous.
I can understand that teachers shouldn't reply outside working hours, in the evening.
But, they don't have to look at emails, they don't even have to have any notification activated.

We are only allowed to email the office (general email) and then when the Office staff get in they passed the emails to the relevant teachers or head. That seems a fair way to do it. Not sure they should allow parents to contact teachers directly, because I can imagine some mum's are a nightmare and email all the time!

Ridiculous emails aren't real rime anyway there is no limit on the time they take to arrive. I have had emails arrive hours after they were sent.

Yes, as a teacher I agree that's silly. I think parents should be able to email whenever but should only expect replies during normal working hours. I've had "that" parent email me at 11.30pm (I was asleep!) and then complain to the Head of Year at 8am the very next morning that I hadn't replied (cc-ing me in to their complaint email!). That did feel a bit OTT.

this is ridiculous. I agree that they should have a triage system of some sort so that 'urgent' emails go to a centrally monitored shared account and other normal emails are dealt with in the school agreed core hours and parents told not to expect an answer outside that (or even for min of 24 hours or something). You're teaching - it's fine for there to be a delay.

But email is asynchronous - do you whinge about British Gas sending you an email at 10pm? I get emails literally 24 hours a day (working with people, internal and external, from Sydney to NY) - some are urgent (as in we might lose million of dollars) and some are not. I have appropriate support from my management about how to respond and manage my workload particularly as I am part time.

I suggest teachers ask for that support from their management (and for assistance dealing with the totally out of order parents who will probably ignore this edict anyway) rather than trying to change the way the actual entire world operates.

Why are parents emailing the class teacher about CV results? Every other school they are dealt with the same way as reporting any other illness - dedicated phone number and answer machine when no-one is there. Not like HT can do anything at 3am.

If a staff member was to isolate, a group email would be sent yes however, calls/texts to staff members should also be made knowing not everyone checks emails outside their "working hours".

That's ridiculous - I often work during the day so email in the evening or weekend when I remember. I don't expect a reply until they are back in school. Perhaps someone has been demanding immediate responses?

That's insane. Why cant the SMT just tell staff to ignore emails outside of work hours? Plus if it's a primary school do they honest check emails during class? Only secondary has free periods to check during 8.40-3.30 surely?

I think my dd infants would prefer if you never talked to them about anything right now and the message is be a inert parent who only responds to one way as they request.

I only contact if it feels really important and if that was further restricted I wouldnt feel comfortable to engage quite frankly.

Parents work and manage their workload and downtime too. I could use my work PC for personal things so it would be a draft that I would fire off from my phone while on a loo break.

Imagine. School has identified an issue and has thought of a simple way to reduce stress for their staff (at possibly the most stressful time any of them have ever worked during).
Out of office etc all ridiculous as staff want to be able to receive emails that are urgent out with school hours. Again, especially at this stressful time. There isn't a special address that parents use, it all goes to the same place. If someone is feeling under pressure, just knowing there is an email there waiting is going to add to that.
I have every sympathy for parents emailing at a time that suits them, when they haven't been asked not to. I have zero sympathy for a parent who has been told this negatively impacts staff wellbeing, and then continues to want the "right" to do this. Keep pushing and the school could remove the option to directly email staff at all, everything could go via the office.

Teachers should also be able to manage their emails to know who are the moany ones just like in any other profession.
With the header and the read column bit you can quickly skim emails to see what is urgent and what isn't. You can also set up phone notifications to do this. Nothing to stop school staff from doing this if they want to log in and read them. I'd do this sometimes during the school holidays.

Office hours is a term used to define just that, nothing to do with having an office or not and by definition, a classroom falls under an office, albeit a coworking one.

"Out of Office" was the Microsoft default name for unattended replies since the year dot. Just a term.

If you are using a halfway decent email system (and I doubt there are many places that are non Microsoft in UK public services) then it's possible to set up quite a complex series of rules on dealing with incoming emails. From redirecting them based on sender/recipient/subject to replying with an stock reply based on the same and on a schedule.

So even if the schools email administrator feels the task is a bit beyond their paygrade, then individual teachers could set up their own automated responses.

Given that email is nearly as old as I am (and I was born in the 1960s) then it's mystifying that so many people seem to struggle with managing it in 2020.

I'm half expecting someone to wonder into this thread and ask what it means for their telegrams to the school ?

There are some very previous people on here like BuddyRun. I’m a social worker, married to a teacher and we both check emails outside working hours. We are not unique snowflakes who have the monopoly on emails out of hours especially not regarding vulnerable individuals.

It’s simple. I make it clear to anyone who emails me that my inbox is not monitored outside of office hours and to X, Y and Z in an urgent situation. I’ve never once batted an eyelid at an email out of hours.

I have no idea what’s being emailed that’s so urgent anyway. If it’s outside school hours, that’s what social services, the police and NHS is for. Social care has an out of hours team.

I’d email them back to only contact me between 3:15 and 3:20 everyday via post.
Yet again this thread is full of teachers who think they are some sort of special profession. Any public facing professional has to deal with abusive, worrying emails and criticism if they don’t respond immediately but no one else can ask the public not to email them at certain times because it’s totally unreasonable. The school need to set up an on call rota of senior staff for emergencies, as every single other public sector organisation does instead of expecting parents to pander to them.

Yet again this thread is full of teachers who think they are some sort of special profession.

My reading is more it's full of teachers with shit support from their employers.

@SequinSmile I also feel that any parent who would complain about you not replying to an email during the night is going to completely disregard a rule about not emailing out of office hours.

I also agree with PP that a teacher is usually not on call out of office times so I really don't see how there could be any urgent emails that might need addressing immediately. (Otherwise what would happen if you went to bed early, or had a few too many glasses of wine or had no data signal?).

Admittedly I have emailed schools well outside of hours.
We've had lots of major life changing and not for the good things happen over the years. When you're on automatic pilot, panicking, you don't think about the time iyswim. It needs to be done and at that moment you remember to email the school, without thinking you do it. Or that's the earliest it can be done even though it's 3am.

The role between school and home should be a partnership in a sense.