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'm so sorry for you, OP.

How pressured and intrusive

This sounds terrible I would be looking for a new job

Has the amount of directed time hours gone up? That seems more than the usual amount. Is that because it's an academy? That seems about an hour more of directed time each day.

I think teachers must start to push back politely both to parents and heads. At a recent meet the teacher, I explained to parents our school policy that parents email the office and they pass it on to the teacher. This in fact means that we do not get out of hours contact from parents. I also explained that I would not necessarily be able to reply immediately that day as I may be teaching all day and that urgent messages should be forwarded to SLT. I was also clear that I did not reply to emails in the evenings. Parents seemed perfectly happy and understood.

Our school uses D
Seesaw and I inadvertently messaged on it, thought it was a 'comment' and the teacher replied at like 7pm...I felt awful and questions or anything now, I always email through the office (albeit this is a Primary School) and generally they check and respond. The teacher may sometimes call if serious.

I don't think teachers or indeed any public facing profession should be required to maintain this level of contact. I'd not be doing this. When on earth are you meant to relax??

As an academy they don't have to stick to directed hours as described in the Burgundy Book.

There are currently 15 people who have voted that IABU.

I'm interested in those views, too - why is this okay?

Everyone else, yes, I am seriously looking into just working my minimum term here and leave. I am working in a big shortage subject, albeit in a TLR role.

This sounds amazing as a parent but a nightmare for the teachers! My son’s school uses Google classrooms and he can message his teachers on there, they are quite good at responding quickly on there but don’t think there is any set expectation about timeframe for reply there. If I want to contact his teachers about something I call them or send an email and it would have to be fairly important to bother!

I had a job in which I’d be inundated with communication 24/7. I can recommend being much slower to respond to low urgency communication as people will often utilise other more efficient means of gaining information (website or whatever). A traffic light system might help, so red (respond in 24 hours Monday to Friday) for urgent reply’s (anything that involves important health issues or police or safeguarding), amber for medium importance communication (respond in 72 hours) and green (almost pointless emails) 7 days. Also send out standard info to everyone, so all parents receive extra curricula provision info reminder with who to contact directly.

There must be a contract of some kind. Worth looking at what it says.

The contract only specifies the time we need to be at the academy, then has the standard "plus whatever time necessary to fulfil the role" kind of wording.

It has since been made clear, in a different context, that, as an academy, they didn't need to stick to anything in the Burgundy Book.

I'd look for another job. It sounds horrendous.

Insane, I’d definitely be job hunting.

could a little revolution be organised? All staff agree (quietly) to only answer stuff in your 8-4:30 contact time hours. If you don’t have time to answer stuff it waits till the next day, or the day after, or the day after. Head might go bonkers initially but realistically what can they do if every staff member sticks to this?

It’s also setting the students up for unrealistic expectations in later life which does them no favours. I’m a uni lecturer, we have a five working day email answering policy.

I think you need to put the boundary in place and communicate it.

HOD I will only respond to queries between 8:30 and 5pm any messages that can not be responded to in the time will be left to the next day.

Parents/ pupils: leave it a month for your tutor group to settle . Then send out an FAQ sheet on who to contact when. e.g. lost planner go to the school office who hold lost property. Make parents aware of the amount of messages you are receiving and that the expectation in year 7 is that the pupil will be accountable.

If you do have a union then you are on a personal contract to negotiate the terms.

I’ve never worked in a school with these ridiculous expectations, and none of my teacher friends have.

I think @Rexxxxxx and @witmum have given some excellent advice.

I have to be honest, having worked in both the corporate world and in teaching, that teachers are very ‘obedient’ and SLT (being mostly ex teachers) manage their staff a bit like managing a classroom, totally inappropriate for the people they deem to be ‘senior professionals’.

The reality is that a lot of rules can be broken, particularly if you are a good teacher of a scarcity subject. They are hardly going to start a disciplinary for you replying to a non-urgent e mail in 48 hours! You need to follow your own professional advice here. So, very urgent e mails (health, safety, absence etc) are acted upon immediately, sensible queries within 72 hours (say) and pointless queries are ignored or replied to once, stating that you won’t be fielding this kind of enquiry again.

I would also bring up the App next time your school have a tick-box ‘well being’ inset and the Head says how important it is to him…..

i’m not in the UK. Our school has such an app to message teachers (among other functions). Before Covid it was normal for parents to walk into the class on drop off and tell the teacher things like “our little Julia is upset because the dog died” and there would be an actual queue each morning at the teachers desk with parents. And we all considered this normal back in the days.

During Covid-years parents were not allowed in school so we got this app. And we could message the teacher instead op speaking to them at dropoff. Our teachers really liked the change, they don’t want to start their day with all the parents at their desk. Messages you can choose to read later, do a quick scan… real fysical people are harder to send away.
Some of the teachers of my sons respond immediately up until midnight. That seems unhealthy to me … but some do a quick short reply at 8 am the next day and that’s fine! Sometimes the teacher initiates contact like “Your son lost his jacket and we cannot find it in school, can you help us with it” and i reply as soon as i can (but also not immediately). But within 24h is ok I think, teacher took the effort to send me this message So it is polite to reply in time and not ignore her.

Dds school typically reply to emails within 3-4 days but mainly they don't bother at all.

This seems a bit daft.

That's how to have a mental breakdown.

Most academies do follow the burgundy book, move schools. Slt culture shapes schools more than anything else.

Tell parents to contact HT!

Time is fully directed between 8.15 and 4.30 each day

You must be waaay over the directed time budget.

Speak to your union. Stop doing the things that aren't part of your job. Look for another post asap.

YANBU. Get out. Get out as soon as you can. We're not paid anywhere near enough to put up with being 'on call' 24 hours a day. Disgusting.

My youngest is still at primary. We are provided with the teachers' mobile numbers (although this year as DC has two class teachers it is a school mobile which gets left in the classroom) so we can contact if we have any issues to to e.g. register absences.

DC1 has just started secondary and after half term they are introducing an app. At the moment we have the class teachers mobile and email and have an office number (primary doesn't have this) to register absences. We have been asked not to send messages over private mobile once the app comes into use.

I would have thought an app was preferable?

Can you not use your screen time settings to silence it between 9pm and 7am or whenever suits you? It's not unreasonable to send a message to a teacher once your child has come home from school and you from work and told you of an issue. If it's urgent then I don't think it's unreasonable to expect an answer within one working day. If it's not urgent I'd expect a couple of days before I got an answer.