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?

"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."

It's precisely "this day and age" that makes it more important. Everyone expects instant gratification and prompt responses these days, and lots of parents have become quite aggressive in their expectations and demands.

We have a year group email that parents can contact and that’s a relatively new thing. I had worked out well so far.
When I worked in other schools I found it shocking that parents had the staff’s actual emails - one teacher got emails from a parent every single day going into great detail about tiny things and blowing playground disputes out of proportion. It was ridiculous.
I think the reasoning is that admin or office staff can filter out the stuff that teachers don’t actually need to be dealing with, and it stops teachers getting nasty emails sent directly to their inbox. If the office staff get it, obviously that’s shit too but if it’s not directed AT them it’s not as unpleasant.

I have said to some parents maybe you would be happier if Johnny swopped to another subject at GCSE or A Level.

No? Well I do have a wait list at A Level

@Realii but the point of this thread is that OP can't email the teacher even with a genuine concern so one would presume petty issues aren't getting through either. If teachers are getting significant numbers of emails which are petty (when is the homework due in, there was a typo in the worksheet, why did X get a detention for eating in class he was hungry?) etc or actually insane and abusive (you wore the same dress for 2 days etc, ) SLT should be handling it. There is absolutely no way that it should be the teacher's job to placate maniacs or busbodies by replying to emails in their spare time. AT the very least there needs to be an out of office reply.

I've never thought it reasonable to contact DD primary school teachers. Parents evenings aside, I've probably directly taken up less than ten minutes a year of teacher time, in total. That includes speaking to them at the classroom door.

I'm not a teacher, but no-one doing any job should open themselves up to unlimited communication, especially when that communication is secondary to what they're actually being paid to do. They certainly shouldn't be aware of let alone replying to emails in time they're not being paid to work.

Making people go through the office is probably the easiest way for schools to handle things. Ideally the school (like any other organisation with lots of "customers") should use an online CRM system where every message is logged as a case in a database, then assigned to the staff member best placed to deal with it by admin, and the response time monitored by management. The idea of this is to reduce teacher work, not give them something extra to do. A good system might even be able to automatically reply to the majority of queries, e.g. reject messages that contain abusive language, auto-reply that questions about homework will not be answered, because it's the pupils job to track what they need to know, etc.

I wish my school would do this. Most of the parents we work with are lovely, reasonable people but the minority who aren't can make life very difficult.

The incoherent ramblings of drunk parents sent at 2am are relatively easy to ignore. But I also get Parents emailing at a weekend then ringing the office Monday morning kicking off because they haven't had a response. Some send seperate emails to multiple members of staff about the same (non-urgent) issue thinking it will force a quicker response, which just creates confusion and wastes time. You'd be surprised how many parents email individual staff to ask questions that have been answered in the newsletter, on the school website, by letter and on school social media. It's all very well saying "just don't open the email if it's outside working hours" but we have to access our email outside office hours due to our workload and some Parents will put "URGENT! Safeguarding issue" in the subject line. It almost always turns out to be something that is not urgent and most definitely not a safeguarding issue but you can't not check! My personal favourite though are the parents who send me links to articles or blog posts to educate me about why the school shouldn't be teaching kids about climate change, offering the HPV vaccine or trying to enforce covid-related rules in school because the pandemic is a "hoax".

I don’t know any other profession where that happens but I wonder if there is some half way house

I can't immediately think of a profession that doesn't have some layer of filtering from clients, customers or service users. How often are you contacting the teacher that this is an actual problem?

Ma

We use Class Dojo. I sometimes message outside of school hours as I'll forget it I don't do it when it's in my head but I always start with 'I'm only messaging now so I don't forget, I don't expect a response until you're working'. It'd not ever to complain though, just usually stuff my child has forgotten to hand in and is in her drawer or something.

Another one here who can't understand what people are emailing about all the time. If it's a homework thing, I find the class WhatsApp very helpful, or else DD asks the teacher herself. Complaining all the time that your child has been 'unfairly' treated is no way to build resilience.

[quote whydoicomehere]@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.

[/quote]
You're opening a whole new can of worms if you give admin staff the authority to decide which emails they pass on to teachers.

Secondary school teacher here. Parents don't routinely get our emails but a) they're guessable once you've seen one b) students can get them through teams.
Most parents and most students are reasonable. If they email or message on teams before 8pm on a weekday, I generally reply immediately. If it's Friday after 5 or the weekend, I reply if it's urgent. If not, it'll wait into Monday at 7.
Some parents and students are not reasonable though. I've had a chain of emails from a student in the past which started with an excuse for why they couldn't possibly do the thing they'd had a week to do (which I didn't reply to because it was Sunday and I didn't check) and became more and more incoherent to the point where the final email, sent after midnight, was all in caps. The excuse was that they didn't have time because they had to go to work. It was a thirty minute exam question.

I never reply promptly to parent emails. It sets up an expectation. If a parent emails me directly they have to wait at least a week. I want to make it quicker and easier for them to help their children deal with the issue than to do it themselves.

Exceptions to this rule include significant send or illness.

Last year a parent wanted me to text her every time her son got homework because she found the homework app too stressful and he couldn’t organise himself. This was a very bright and capable year 11. No chance I’m helping in that situation.

As for my dcs school. I have only ever emailed positive emails to thank staff. The children have planners and I write notes in that if I need to tell them something important. Otherwise I encourage my dc to sort stuff out themselves.

The only time I've contacted an individual at the school via email it's been the form tutor, and that has been after going through the school office. Communication has always been really good - same day response every time, often outside working hours.

Teachers need to be shielded from parents with trivial concerns, that's what the office is there for.

On the odd occasion I have E mailed the school/teacher I have never expected an answer ASAP. I certainly don't expect an answer outside school hours.

In fact I was shocked the last time I emailed the school how quickly I had an answer.

I had to email as my year 7 child had forgot his password to get onto the homework programme they use, it was 8pm and the teacher emailed back with in 10 minutes. I certainly didn't expect an answer until Monday.

We have google classroom set up, whereby students can message their teachers for clarification.
We've had parents "masquerading" as their kids and asking snippy questions, not realising that they perhaps should have slipped in a few spelling errors or grammatical blunders to truly make them authentic!

As much as it would be useful I can understand why the teachers don't do it , I have heard enough ridiculous requests and questions in the playground that I can only imagine what it would be like on email.

I tend to find if they don't consider you mad as a box of frogs and there is a reason you may be given a contact. So for example I do have the direct email for the schools SENCO due to ds1 needs and I presume my less likelihood to be insane (I mean it's not totally impossible I have my moments) , on the grounds that the mother I am aware of that refuses to do sensible things like check the website or the notice board or you know her child's bag. Does not have it.

I'm not generally a fan of teacher moaning on MN but give them a break , you can't expect personal access to a teacher when there are dozens of kids. You know perfectly well some will abuse it.

@BackforGood

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.

Oh yes. I'm a lecturer. Very familiar.

We have all teachers' emails (actually, having said that, we use Class Dojo for one class teacher, though when there was a problem one day at 4pm that she'd need to know about for the morning, she did reply straight away but we thought she'd still be in school). Both DCs are primary.

(teacher, not parent). We use class dojo. It is great for 90% of parents and far better than their planners (messages often go missing in those, especially when the child claims it is at home because a parent wrote a message they don't want me to see! But the 10% who send utterly infuriating emails get you down. It has a good do not disturb feature though, so only needs checking during working hours. My work email needs checking on a Sunday night, or I feel lost on Monday morning, so I'm glad no parents have that email!

I know it’s frustrating but think of the bigger picture. Secondary teachers may have something like seven classes and a form, so 160-240 pupils. If that many parents had a direct dial to us when we have approx five hours of planning and prep time per week, can you imagine how we’d ever get anything done? Also, there is rarely an individual phone number per teacher - it’s normally one to a departmental office. Imagine five teachers share it. 1200 parents with access to that number...it would ring incessantly and annoy people trying to mark exam papers and write reports. Where you’d win (getting fast access) you’d also lose (everything would be marked more slowly).

Anything important can go through a school receptionist and then a time can be arranged for a call, and anything else can be emailed via a receptionist or directly.

Meant to say - your school should be telling teachers to schedule calls. Ping pong is not acceptable! YANBU

Excellent work here OP. You’ve made the Daily Mail 🙄🙄🙄