Bloody rude kids and parents- AIBU to be annoyed?

[dollydoops]

I’m a head of department in a secondary school and since the GCSE results came out last Thursday, I’ve been looking over students’ scripts who are near to the boundary for the next grade up, to see if they should be sent for a review of marking. I’ve had about 30 to do, and each one takes between 30 and 45 minutes, so the workload is not inconsiderable.

I have absolutely no problem doing this, as I said on a thread last week. I think of it as part of my job, and it gives me pleasure when a student’s grade goes up. However, I do have a problem with the staggeringly rude and entitled behaviour of some students and parents, including
-parents and students repeatedly emailing me to ‘chase’ their scripts and badger me to get them done quickly, even though they only came to me on Friday and there has been a bank holiday weekend in between
-students just sending me their scripts to review without even asking me
-students asking me to review their scripts without saying please or thank you
-students not acknowledging my email about their script at all, even though I have spent a long time writing it and making personalised recommendations
-one student who responded to my email suggesting that they shouldn’t get a review of marking, as their paper had been fairly marked, with ‘I find that hard to believe’(!!)

This is just so rude!! Do people not have any sense of basic email etiquette or manners any more? Has anyone else experienced similar?

name changed to protect my students and myself!

NRTFT but I share your feelings and I also do the "rude ones to the bottom of the pile".

We use Teams for most school things and in particular for scheduling and posting times for individual music lessons. There are a few hundred of them each week so it is a huge task. The draft is published and kids can then request swaps if there is a fixture or they have an appointment. Staff are also meant to tell us if they need all kids in a lesson for a test. The number of rude requests we get is insane. Every half term I post with 2 made-up quotes, one from a polite student and one from a rude one. This does work and reinforces the point that if we spoke to students in the way they write to us, they would complain, and politeness costs nothing. I also bang home the point that one of our school's values is Respect - I can then be seen to be holding the line. It helps that I am in the twilight of my career and don't really give a toss about annoying kids or parents.

Absolute madness OP.

The exam officer identifies the ones close to a boundary on the day results come in & SLT will make final decision on whether to apply - children then sign for ROMs when they receive their results envelope.

Teachers aren't really involved, unless someone spots something egregious in the results and we may then ask for scripts and go from there.

Certainly HoDs shouldn't be reviewing that amount of papers. It's a huge workload. Your school needs to change their policy.

I agree. I always try and thank people. Dd's physics teacher phoned me and suggested we pay for a review after her gcse 2 years ago. It did go up a grade and I just checked I emailed to thank him and I did (and the exam officer.) I'd have thanked him on the phone too.

It’s not part of your job.

You are on holiday. Next year, turn off your emails and make it clear to your exams office before end of term 6 that any scripts will be looked at after the September return, and that they should not be advising otherwise.

It is the school that recommends whether you need to get regraded. If you are one or two marks from the next grade up it is worth it. Parents do have to pay to have papers remarked. My daughter is 2 grades from a 9 in geography and I am quite happy to pay for a remark. You may be surprised to know that sometimes examiners do make mistakes so totally worth it.

I have tertiary students who email me from addresses such as the vein of this, suckmyxxxx21, with no greeting or please or thank you and not my name and sometimes not theirs. Demands or illegible questions are common, often text speak and spelling, and sometimes even an instruction in the subject line and nothing else. I also get them at eg 10pm at night wanting to know what the test tomorrow at 8am is all about, having attended around 0% of lectures.

It's appalling. I usually don't respond but will address it in the lecture ie if you want me to respond to an email, try as a minimum: Hi abs12, etc etc.

There are contrastingly a few students that are impeccable and seem to do well in all courses and jobs after study. Most however are utterly shocking. It's an embarrassment.

Oh my word @abs12, don’t tell me it happens in tertiary education too! Argh! I feel so sorry for you having to deal with that.

We have emails from PARENTS with wildly inappropriate email addresses.

It's very odd to get an email from misskinky69 who has a kid in my class (I've made that up but you get the picture)

Sadly, that's the world we live in nowadays. Too many people are just entitled, ungrateful, rude and impatient.

Personally, I'd flat out refuse to reply to anyone who behaved as you described in your original post. When they take the time to learn proper, basic courtesy, then perhaps I'd have the time to reply. Consider it a reward for learning from their mistakes.

It’s not actually OPs job to work in the summer holidays. So she absolutely should be thanked by people asking her to work during her time off. 16 year olds are capable of basic manners even if they are stressed.

I think back to when I was 16 and honestly I wouldn’t really have known much about the scope of a teachers job.

if the accessibility for a remark- which I have as an option- was via my teacher then I think that would’ve made me assume it was their job or responsibility.

I think the main difference with “people nowadays” is that teachers checking your work for remarks really wasn’t a thing in the 90s and I don’t know anyone who would’ve formally challenged a grade. Education was less inclusive and the plebs just received whatever they got really!

It’s always been a thing. 20 years ago my a level was reviewed because I was one mark off an A. It was remarked and I got 2 extra marks because the initial marker had marked a correct answer wrong. So I got my A. It wasn’t entitlement, it was getting the mark I had earned.

It wasn’t as common though. As the OP describes it now seems tens of students in each cohort are asking for remarks

although a family friend had his English gcse remarked and increased by 17 marks which I thought was incredible. How are mistakes like that allowed to get through quality control?!

Oh wow 17 marks is madness! We were only allowed to ask for the teacher to review the mark if we were one or two marks off when I was in school. And you couldn’t contact the teacher in the holidays so you had to wait until September.

it does sound like it’s become more common then. I wonder what the percentage is of the remarks going up a grade.

Totally ignore every single email which lacks basic courtesy and manners. All of them, just blank them. When asked why you didn’t respond, inform them that you only respond to manners 👍🏻

I'd reply to any rude/cheeky emails with a simple...

"Yours has just been moved to the bottom of the pile."

There aren't many jobs which would expect people to work during the holidays. Wonder how many of these rude parents/students think you only work 9-3.30 every day (got a few friends who teach and tell me how things are, didn't actually know they had to review exam scripts in the holidays though). And I absolutely would expect teenagers to include please and thanks in emails. Even my young kids know they must write thank you notes (and sometimes texts) when someone has done something nice for you. Not at the exam stage yet, but they don't need asking to write thank you notes for all their teachers and assistants each term.