To expect to be able to directly contact teachers?

[Fallingrain]

Just that really. My school doesn’t give out email addresses or phone number. If we want to get in touch, we have to send a message to the school office. They pass it on then inevitably we get phone tennis because I’m working when they try and call back and they never arrange a fixed appointment to speak. I understand why they do it but in this day and age, I’m not sure that shielding teachers to that extent cuts it any more. I don’t know any other profession where that happens but I wonder if there is some half way house. How do other schools deal with parent/teacher comms?

My children’s secondary school has all the email addresses on their website and the primary ones are easy to guess as the LEA uses the same format for all addresses.
We can also message via google classroom, which we did through lockdown.

We used to give out emails. I had so many over the weekend that were then followed up multiple times by parents demanding answers before Monday morning that it became unmanageable.
I also had a good few threats directed at me via email, usually because I had put little Johnny into time out for hitting or being disruptive and how DARE I discipline their child.
Thank god our email addresses changed and the policy of giving them out was rethought.
I do give mine to a select number of parents if there is a particular issue. E.g. SEN pupils etc.

No I think a few parents don't know where to draw the line.
I understand it is frustrating I'm constantly missing the school call and can't return it as it's a block number with no VM so not even sure which DC school it is.
I know a few parents who'd email and call constantly for the sake of it.

@ZigZagToTheBeach
It depends on the parent. That’s the issue really. reasonable parent asking if I could send child to look for jumper next day, no issue. Parent emailing on a Saturday about something tiny that happened on Wednesday and I have no knowledge of because the child has never mentioned it - well...

Think about how many emails teachers would get if the parents for all of their students had their email addresses

I teach in secondary I've had this since 2007 and it's fine. I've had three parents emails since March. Students use it more but 1) Know very well anything out of hours won't be answered until I log on in the morning 2) Have learned the use of the Chat system on Teams so general enquiries are shared with the group and cut down on multiple messages. Sometimes I find other students have answered the query for them.

There will always be the odd unreasonable person, but they're quite unusual and I always forward/copy such egregious shite to the next up the food chain so they're in the loop.

I should also say I only email via my laptop, never my phone, and have ensured I have to log on to the school's system to check emails, so am not mithered by pings out of hours. It certainly involves work outside school hours but as I get up very early, I clear them before I go in, or at least draft, review in school, then send.

I left a capital letter out ... oops.

Why are you contacting the school to that extent?

It's funny how they'll always clarify the homework the night before or morning that it's due!

I was talking to a University Lecturer last week. She was venting about how a student she was supervising, and had a meeting with on the Thursday morning, sent her his work at Wednesday teatime. Work which she was obviously supposed to be familiar with before the Thursday morning meeting.

Oh, this wasn't an undergrad - this was a Masters' student.

I think it’s great that you feel like that. Can you give me the contact details of your doctor and dentist that you have the direct line to, because I need them! Mine don’t.

@Fluffyowl00 you beat me to it. 2nd thread in 2 days about teachers and emails.

[quote flumposie]@Fluffyowl00 you beat me to it. 2nd thread in 2 days about teachers and emails.[/quote]
It's odd though. The other thread went completely the opposite direction. The other thread was almost entirely people saying that teachers should be available 24/7 and parents should be allowed to email directly whenever suits them about anything they fancy.
Somehow this thread has had entirely the opposite response.

I’m having this problem at the moment. People asking why do we need direct emails? I’ve had to email through the office with no idea who has access to it about my daughter’s Educational Health Care Plan
(EHCP) and provision which is official sensitive information. Not happy about it and don’t understand why I can’t contact teacher directly about her provision. Due to them not doing what they should be doing I have to email to ensure I have evidence for the LA on why school can’t meet her needs/ it’s not working. It’s frustrating. For what it’s worth I have a public facing role where members of the public can freely contact me.

@WeAllHaveWings

I've never contacted a teacher via email..

My secondary age child is isolating at the moment because a student in school has a positive covid test. The teacher left off a vital piece of info for the homework, he emailed, teacher responded, all good.

Mundane, is it?

🙄

Are you primary or secondary.
. My advice would be to very clearly pass on an email address either by putting it in your child's diary or writing a direct letter to the teacher. Once they have emailed you then contact is straightforward.

Also, fuck off. Yes, teachers SHOULD give all the information in school hours. Even in normal times when covid isn't an issue, bits of information/links
/documents sometimes get left off the online homework system. Teachers aren't perfect, and if a student emails to say that they haven't uploaded the document, that's fine.

Parents constantly hassling them about it would not be.

@Shoeoholic

I’m having this problem at the moment. People asking why do we need direct emails? I’ve had to email through the office with no idea who has access to it about my daughter’s Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) and provision which is official sensitive information. Not happy about it and don’t understand why I can’t contact teacher directly about her provision. Due to them not doing what they should be doing I have to email to ensure I have evidence for the LA on why school can’t meet her needs/ it’s not working. It’s frustrating. For what it’s worth I have a public facing role where members of the public can freely contact me.

You didn’t send a request for the SENCO to contact you? Before detailing sensitive information? The office staff have the same levels of professional discretion required as teachers.

this bollocks about how impossible it would be for a teacher is bolllcks, a teacher can write a standard email telling you that they have a lot of work and may take X days to be back in touch. At least a physical.acknowledgement would be something.

It's odd though. The other thread went completely the opposite direction. The other thread was almost entirely people saying that teachers should be available 24/7 and parents should be allowed to email directly whenever suits them about anything they fancy.
Somehow this thread has had entirely the opposite response.

Actually I think most posters said that the school in question was silly to place a time restriction on when parents could email and that the teachers should manage their time to only respond when they were happy to rather than have a silly email policy.
Better yet, schools should either just not give out direct email addresses or have clear auto responses saying when they can expect a response but if it's about 'this, this or this' then contact the office.

Primary here. All emails and calls go through office and we get back to parents when we are able. Even then it’s abused, and you’d be shocked at the number of parents who expect an immediate response! I had an email, followed by two chaser emails asking why I haven’t yet got back to them, passed along a couple of weeks ago. All sent within the space of two hours while I was busy teaching! Can you imagine the madness if that particular parent had my direct phone number? (If I had one, which I don’t!)

@Emmelina why on earth did the office pass along the chaser emails? They should have a stock reply set up to let parents know when to expect an answer.

They just passed the whole thread along at once so I had all the information. It wasn’t done in a chasing manner from the office perspective! But more so I wasn’t confronted with “I sent several emails!” when I’d only seen one of them.

@Emmelina fair enough!

I think it would probably be useful for an auto reply to go out setting expectations for response time though. Although you'd think it obvious you'd be busy

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4046002-school-asking-parents-to-only-email-teachers-during-working-hours
a whole other thread on why teachers don't need to be contacted by parents.
just started a couple days ago.

At my DCs school all teachers email addresses are on the website. I have to email out of hours as I work full time- I don't expect an immediate response- we're told to wait three working days for a response. Quite often teachers phone back rather than email, who he must tja them much longer. But that's secondary, I would expect a different system at primary. From experience I'd probably be more likely to ask for a face to face meeting, which would take a lot longer than an email.

Another one of these threads 🙄
Are we going to start phoning our GPs directly too, rather than through reception.
I'm a teacher and a parent and whilst I understand that sometimes you need to speak with the teacher, half of what is asked is normally printed out in black and white on a newsletter anyway. The other half is usually stuff we don't need to know.
My response in the other thread was not as polite as this one!