Are teacher messaging apps reasonable?

[Elendel]

I am a teacher in a secondary school.

I started in a new place a few months back. In this place, parents have an app on which they, and students, can message us 24/7 and we are expected to reply as soon as possible, but latest within 24h. The app filters out swearing, but other than that it can be a free-for-all.

I do not have time to respond within a typical school day as I am either teaching, in a meeting or on duty, and with briefings as well, responding to parents either falls within the 15min lunch I get (unpaid) or outside of those hours. Time is fully directed between 8.15 and 4.30 each day and PPA is the absolute minimum school can get away with.

Messages arrive any time between midnight (some students messaging at 1am!) and midnight again, but parents most often message after work (understandably) and will expect us to have responded by mid-day. Some are messages about reasons why homework isn't done, some are asking me about what happened in other subjects, yet others are to challenge detentions given.

Is this level of communication acceptable? It just feels like I'm never off work, because I spend a considerable amount of time responding to the messages of the 1200 students and their parents on top of doing my actual day job to keep up with communication demands.

YABU - get on with it, it's your job

YANBU - that's ridiculous

I wouldn’t do this. our contact goes through the school office via email. They don’t have my direct email address.

If a parent got annoyed - I would reply and make it clear that I only reply to messages within the school working hours. And if management got annoyed by this I would flag that’s it unacceptable. Further than that if there is pressure then yes I would contact the union. They know it’s unacceptable but may probably rely on the fact that lots of teachers would feel pressured to do this.

Absolutely ridiculous but this is how it is in this day and age. I suggest you set aside 15 minutes after school for this app when you do your marking and blitz all the messages with copy and paste jobs, same the next day. Obv not on weekends as you are not working.
It will only be a quick task if you make a list of rapid responses you can copy and paste or “thumbs up” a lot of comments. Messages like “Pippa wasn’t feeling well and our dog died so she didn’t do her homework but it is not her fault.” Do not require a written answer but an acknowledgment- if you don’t have thumbs up maybe make “Thank you for letting me know.” your first copy and paste message. I also suggest “Thank you for letting me know about this. I think this deserves more time than I have right now so will reply in depth when I get a chance.” “Thank you for letting me know……. Whilst I understand where you are coming from they will still need to attend detention in line with our behaviour policy.”

This is insane. I work in a primary but I would be looking for another job. Life is too short to be on call 24 hours a day.

In the meantime, it sounds like they need a reply not a resolution within 24 hours. Could you reply to the minor things. "Just thanks for letting me know." Or "in order to encourage some independence this is the kind of thing we would encourage your child to chase up themselves tomorrow."

My dc school uses a messaging app within classcharts. I would never expect a reply within a certain time. If it is really important I would contact the school or head of the department as needed.
My dc teachers use it to tell me how my child has done in exams, or if they are doing particularly well. I use it as a means of thanking teachers at times to. Some teachers reply within minutes/ hours others are days.

I guess some parents expect teachers to be on it all the time, and I am sorry that people don't respect teachers more. I love this way of communicating but maybe teachers not so much 😕.

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Also are the school providing an internet service for this?
Why should you be using your phone contract to provide the infrastructure for this?

I would be refusing to put this on my phone.

OK, you have a mad head. I'm sorry.

Short term, allocate a (short) amount of time per weekday and cut and paste as suggested.

Look for a new job. You don't have to put up with this. It is NOT the norm.

YADNBU- this so far beyond reasonable that I'm slack jawed.

That's absolutely absurd!
Your headteacher is crazy if she thinks this is a good thing!

Please leave and work somewhere else.

Not everywhere is like this.

There are lots of vacancies!

I work across loads of maintained schools. Not expected or acceptable.

Check the OFSTED Framework, workload is part of it. Staff feedback would flag poor practice.

I just don’t think teachers should have to accept this. It’s bollocks.

It’s also non-standard as plenty of schools don’t do this.

I wonder if in the meantime OP can literally just reply ‘ok’ to every message. I say in the meantime because this alone would make me look for another job.

Seriously leave.

For now get a stock response, and only reply more personally if something merits it. Include working hours in your response.

I don’t think it is common at all - union I think.

All secondary schools have it around here on the synergy parent app.

Their is a difference between a parent portal app and a messaging app like the one the OP describes.

Yanbu that's horrific. Have you raised with other teachers and or union? They can't expect you to be corresponding like that with evey hour accountable in the day

The school cannot oblige you to install this app on your personal device. Simply uninstall it on your personal phone and only look at it within reasonable working hours.

Are you able to have any kind of out of office or auto response, eg that you reply to messages on Thursday afternoons if it's urgent outside of that time then please ring school office?

"Their is a difference between a parent portal app and a messaging app like the one the OP describes."

Is there? What's the difference? We can message the various teachers through that and the students can message specific teachers and other pupils through teams on theirs.

Outrageous! At my secondary school, students and parents can email us directly, but it is school policy that we are not expected to read or respond outside of working hours.

Schools cannot just not recognise a union. They exist- it's a fact!!

But- sorry - this sounds awful. I'd never have it on my own phone, and the expected return time is unrealistic.

I would say that year 7 settle down soon- it's early days with loads of questions, which does calm down once they get used to systems and timetables.

I'm not a teacher, but am a school admin. Our school have a similar app. I've been quite vocal about my hatred for it.
Parents can't distinguish between this app and normal social media.
We are a primary school, so it is just parents that message, but they will call the office and say they've tried to get in touch with the teacher but haven't had a reply - forgetting that it is the middle of the school day and the teachers are otherwise engaged. The messaging service is treated like WhatsApp and the bulletin board is treated like Facebook. For some, inexplicable reason, our school haven't revoked the parents ability to comment.......

A union should still be able to advise you all of your rights and what to say in a letter to management.

If eveyonen clubbed together and signed a message to leadership saying you can only eg do this for one hour a week unless more ppa time is given ? What could they actually do? What would happen if you ignored the messages and only replied once a week? Would you be allowed to email every parent in your class saying that you will no longer reply unless there is a specific question, if not please know that it's 'noted', and please only email for these reasons and if it's questions like (give examples) then please look on school website/call office etc? And also tell your class to pass this message onto parents?

All of the school management systems that I have seen require a third party app to enable the messaging. (teams etc.)
They also use email to contact the teachers (if that function is available) so they don't have to have the app on their personal devices so the teacher chooses when they wish to view the messages.

What the OP describes is very obtrusive in an intrusive way.

That's absolutely batshit

I work in a school and we have the technology to be able to allow this kind of messaging from parents but we don't enable it

It's a massive time suck, totally unnecessary, most of what parents would ask questions about is available on the school website, they just can't be arsed to look

I like the response from a pp "we would encourage your child to show independence by following this up in person" rather than actioning anything parents are asking or a generic "thank you for bringing this to my attention"

You cannot possibly individually reply without spending more time on that than planning for your actual job.