Lack of response from School

[shaddupayouface]

Hi
Does anyone else find that if they email the school with queries about lessons/teaching that they have to wait days for a reply?

Sometimes.

I would rarely email in unless something very important. Do you regularly email in?
Teachers generally can only respond out of lesson time so if they have a full teaching day, they may not have time to get back to you that day.

Nope. Same day.

We are told to email specificaly because teachers are in lessons and can’t come to the phone.

How long have you waited. A day to two - fair enough. But a week is not on.

Some days teachers an have a full teaching day plus meeting straight after school and need to get home straight after work (pick up from childcare etc) so there just isn't time to email back. I would expect an email within a few days unless the staff member is absent.

Also very much depends on how urgent the matter is.

Our school has a 48 hours maximum for replies policy during term time. Have you sent a few?

How often to do email "queries" in and how long does it take to get a reply?
Teachers are busy during the day teaching your child then busy in the evening preparing lessons for your child.
If your emails are infrequent and important then yes I'd expect a reply within a couple of days so they can fully support the child.
If, on the other hand, you are a PITA that regularly emails them quibbling and moaning over small details well then i wouldn't blame them for being slow to respond 🤷🏽

Really? If a parent is emailing then they obviously think it’s important. If you want to create a bad relationship with a parent then ignoring them is definitely the way to go.

Do you regularly email the teacher?

I emailed two days before half term and heard nothing so I emailed again at the end of Monday (which was the first day back) as I still hadn’t heard back. I asked if she’d got my previous email and she said yes but didn’t apologise for the delay. I’ve asked her a specific question about helping my son and she’s yet to answer it. I do worry about being a “nuisance” so I’ve left it for now but I do think it’s bloody rude if not totally unprofessional.

No this is the first time I’ve emailed her.

With most members of staff - no. I often get almost immediate responses if sent outside teaching hours. Sometimes at the silliest times of the night!
A couple of staff members I have contacted never replied! It was mostly for their own information so I never made much of it. It left a poor impression of that staff member though.

That’s pretty rubbish.
As a private school I expect them to take a dim view of such poor communication.
I’d send another email and cc in their immediate superior - head of year or head of department etc.

That's seems a reasonable time to expect a response so yes, I would think that was unprofessional. Even if I didn't have the info yet I would have sent a reply acknowledging the email by now.

If you haven't heard by the end of the week, email again but copy in head of dept/ head of year or whoever their manager is.

Yes some teachers are great at getting back to me if I need some info. However, the headteacher isn’t particularly great at replying either so I’m not going to get much help from her on this matter I’m sure. I haven’t met the teacher in question yet, she started at the school in the summer term. I will be seeing her at the parents evening in a week or two so I’ll bring it up then and hopefully she’ll change my impression of her. I know emails can be tricky when trying to interpret someone’s character.