Can't we just send our kids to school and not have constant events or texts to think about

[monotonousmum]

I probably am being a little unreasonable, but I can't be the only one who thinks like this.

Eldest started school in September....I say September but in reality it was a complicated mix of an hour one week, 2 hours the next, then a week of mornings (one day with lunch), finally starting full time first week of October. I was already wondering how anyone actually manages to work.

I work full time, as does my husband. 1 younger child in nursery. School only contact one parent for general day to day stuff, and that falls to me (which is another issue in itself).

So...each week I have anywhere between 5-20 texts from the school (don't park in the car park, don't forget it pj day next week, sponsorship money due yesterday, school photo day, school dinner reminder etc etc), a selection of emails (usually with attachments that are too long for text), some letters in the book bag, notes in the back or front of the reading record book.
Sometimes there is stuff on the school calendar which hasn't been mentioned elsewhere.

I'm totally overwhelmed. Some of the info is repeated in several places (e.g. text to tell us we've received an email about children in need), but just the amount of info was totally unexpected to me.

There's all sorts of sponsored events, dress up days, changes to snacks or schedules.

Can't I just drop my kid to school, they teach her to to read and write (among other things) and then I pick her up and ask her what she's had for lunch and what she learned?? (Not that she ever remembers either).

Is the school OTT or are they all like this? Am I the only one not coping?

It’s just constant.

Parent mail, dojo, google classroom, wise pay, Xpressions, satchel one, the school portal, tt rock stairs and some other apps too!

Texts emails and WhatsApp’s oh and if you need to know for tomorrow and it’s 10pm it will be on Twitter that none of us check because they post utter crap half the time. They used to be on Facebook as well as one point.

@CarrotVan

And the headteacher also send several 'inspirational messages' and bible quotes a week to all parents.

Yes that as well.

Forgot those

How many kids do you have that you're spending 5 hours a week on reading school communication?

I’d have to have about 50 children to spend 5 hours each week on school communication.

I remember my mum moaning about this back in the 90s There was definitely less admin but it all arrived on chewed up bits of paper I’d probably spilt ribena on and left in my bag for three weeks.

I do think teachers and schools need to get more hard nosed about “complaints” though. People always complain about everything! Doesn’t mean you have to open a 9th line of communication. Right now my workplace is having a layout change and people complain every day that they didn’t know even though we’ve had plumpteen emails about it for months. The correct response to “well I didn’t know!” is “well most people did Malcolm, it was in the email/text/app/newsletter”.

I so know what you mean! At one point I had 3 kids at different schools and was sending admission slips to the wrong school with the wrong kid, many mufti, pyjama and sports days were missed as I couldn't keep up with the information. The bombardment of information from schools via different channels is overwhelming, especially as a working parent with limited amount of headspace to take it all in.

If it's of any consolation, I found that it gets easier when they go to secondary school.

7 emails so far this week... plus the dojos... plus some paper letters. One was overnight notice about school photos.

The termly printed newsletter is easier to follow where you have a list of dates together to put into your phone/ calendar/ diary as you wish.

The problem is that if you do lose track of a date, especially if it pinged when you were in the middle of something else, it's a faff to find the right kind of format to even look back at what it was.

There's that many wear this, wear that days for umpteen reasons, most of which aren't actually that purposeful.

My sister was a SAHM and went to everything; Literally at least once a week, often more, she was at the school for something. I cant do that.

FoxgloveSummers
Some of the methods of communication people complain about are mainly parents added in to learning platforms for the students.

For example we use SatchelOne for homework. He idea is that teachers can upload homework, resources and it works like an old homework diary. Another function is that parents can see the homework. No secondary teacher I know expects parents to be actively monitoring SatchelOne or any other homework platform. Giving parents access means those who want to can have a look, it shuts down the endless complaints that precious DC wasn't told about homework, DC couldn't possibly have done their homework because they had dance and tea at Granny's on Thursday even though they've had a week, that they didn't have the resource etc. If parents don't want to check SatchelOne then they can easily not look at it. As a teacher you can see student views and parent views on a homework. Most parents aren't reading every homework task.

I have had this conversation recently!
And yes to the poster who said as it usually goes just to mums it’s another thing to add to our mental load that dads don’t have!
Plus adding to the guilt of working already there’s all these activities I won’t be able to go to

Oh god yes, it drives me absolutely bananas.

YANBU, I never quite realised just how much endless info primary school was dumping out each week until the last moved onto secondary this year...it's been bliss! Fortnightly blog post emailed out with reminders for the next month's worth of key dates, no drip drip drip of emails throughout the week!

Yes I agree. I've got 4 kids in 3 separate schools and it's a nightmare. I always miss something.

Yanbu I am struggling as well. We have christmas fayre which requires a different coloured item of various types all dropped off on different specific days. Non uniform days, pe kit days, donation for x y and a days, book days, bring some random shit to school days. Each thing (eg permission and money for disco) has to be dropped off somewhere different at different times.

It's so overwhelming. I try and put stuff in my calendar but have found my calendar is now so full that stuff generally just gets ignored. So now I try and concentrate on the stuff that's important to my child, and chuck money at it instead as a lot of stuff is about raising money for the school. So I might donate a lot of one thing requested rather than lots of different things, or just buy a shitload of raffle tickets at once.

I was thinking about this the other day, when reading about school things on here.. My two children are adults now, but in their school days in the 1980's era, it was a nice simple procedure of just going to school, with no meeting up with teachers from school, no phoning and messges about your children at school, no ridiculous waffle about school lunch boxes, no big collections of money, for leaving teachers, and no issue with bullying in the school, and no teaching assistants, or these safeguarding people,

Communication is good (in theory), it's the amateurism of it that drives me nuts.

In the business world, good managers and employees have long learned to optimise their electronic communications so as not to swamp the receiver. It's as if school just learned yesterday about things like emails and texts and Class Dojo and Google Classroom and what not, and the head teachers were desperately eager to look cool and try all these fancy new tools at once, with no joined up thinking or comms strategy.
It's feels a bit like being teleported back to the early noughties, when your trendy-technophile mum is forwarding you every chain-mail and cat-meme under the sun, and constantly hassles you to have a look at her flashy MySpace page.

YANBU. I speak as someone who spent Monday night making a Tudor house (using materials which can be burnt safely), and then putting together a "simple homemade" Tudor outfit for DS to wear during their recreation of the great fire.

Completely agree..... and while we are on the subject of primary schools, why can't they just 'leave' them anymore? Towards the end of Yr 6(pre covid) it became ridiculous. Messages from the school about various leaving events, discos, hoodies and other memorabilia (tat). PTA getting involved and organising ice cream vans and what not to turn up to school for all sorts of 'treats'. Random parent groups organising parties and BBQs. For fucks sake just let them say goodbye, write on some shirts, feel a bit sad and you know ... leave!! It's bitter sweet. It's OK to feel sad. Don't throw all this crap at it.

Get ready for the admin onslaught at the end of Yr 6 OP!!

End of rant. Sorry to hijack.

It is a big change from nursery non-communication to the overflow in primary school. I found the easiest is to set aside a time per day and go through all in once.

So, ignore everything during the day and set aside 1/2 hour to read, print, sign and return to the book bag whatever is the current problem of the day.

I also found that if the school communicates via several platforms I choose the one I like and ignore the rest.

The idea of a separate email address for the school is also good.

You can get the school to send stuff to two different emails, ours explained that they use the first one on the form as default and only do a second on request. You can also set up your email to forward school emails automatically to your husband, but then you need to communicate who is doing what.

Private groups like WhatsApp with parents can be helpful but it depends how much it goes into gossip and natter. I had mine on mute mainly and just checked every now and then.

I hear you OP

I finished 20 years of school runs this year and I thought I would notice not doing them. Not so, what I've realised is that the mental load of "school stuff" has vanished overnight - I can't believe how much it has freed me up.

Personally I would prefer a busy school with lots on to one that didn't organise these things. Part of the comms issue though is that most primary schools don't have the resources for someone to be in overall charge of comms so things just get sent out willy nilly.

Oh god yes
4 children, 3 different schools and I’ve just counted 11 different ways of communicating
Sometimes the information goes on to everything, sometimes it only goes on one so you have to check every single one every single day or you miss something 😤

I also had a child who loathed art and anything creative but got a project each term to make a model of each particular topic. I've spent many hours creating a ww2 shelter in a shoebox or a 3d model of the pyramids or paper mache models of the solar system...it was literally homework for parents

YANBU

I really resent it. I don't have time for it either. Its like having a separate part-time job. Why did schools get like this? And of course the sodding PTA is a whole separate time waste of communication.

And I really resent all endless 'dress up days' . I resent the financial cost, and the time cost of of them.. Plus they are really stressful for many Non-NT kids or just sensitive kids like mine, so then I have to spend lots of time reassuring and talking to them for a bloody week up to the event.

Just stop school. Stop the dressing up. Stop all the communication.
And stop bloody homework for junior age kids too.

@Laiste

And YES to the mistakes meaning half of the above will arrive a second or third time with the dates changed to correct ones or the attachments actually attached!

Oh God yes this!!!

Without fail every email sent from school either didn't have the important attached document. Or if it (miraculously) did it was invariably incorrect. So, we'd then get a 3rd email apologising for the error. A 4th email without the important attachment (again). Followed by a 5th email now actually with the attachment. Ending with a 6th email apologising for the corrections.

Fuck. Off.

How the Hell do these people keep their jobs? Any average 7 year old can attach something to a bloody email.