Would you expect this response?

[Dilbertian]

Term officially ends this Tuesday. I emailed the Senco yesterday (Saturday). The auto-reply basically said that the school was closed for the holidays, would reopen on 1 Sept, and that she would respond to my email in September.

Is this reasonable?

Is the senco a part timer? Has the school already closed for the holidays or are the kids in on Monday and Tuesday?

Yes. I'd imagine someone is motoring emails for the next couple of days. Pick up the phone if you need to speak to them.

Monday and Tuesday are Inset days, so teachers are in. I don't know whether she's part-time, but doubt it (could a school with over 1000 pupils and a SEN unit have apart-time Senco?). My email was in response to something that the school raised, that might need actioning now in order to be in place in September.

When did the school raise this issue?
INSET may not be in school and the expectation is that staff are engaged in training. Not admin.

In that case it’s probably just auto reply that’s been set up already. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a response tomorrow, especially given they wanted a reply from you. I’d give them a ring.

My school I would expect to get through to senior staff but no one else. Our school reception would also answer.

Primary usually just ignored all emails even when open!!

Quite often Inset days at this time of year are dis-aggregated, which means staff have fulfilled the hours of training during term time. School is therefore now closed for the holidays. If your enquiry is urgent, there should be a way of contacting someone.

The school is closed to parents and students during INSET so it’s reasonable. INSET is for training. f it’s urgent call them, but two days notice is far too late to contact them - they’ll probably be in meetings/ training all Monday and Tuesday

We technically have two Inset days today and tomorrow. Our staff have already worked the hours through twilight training though and the school is therefore closed with nobody in. I think that’s a pretty common arrangement. It’s possible that staff have already done their hours for the two INSET days, hence the out of office reply. Our SENCO and other senior staff will be checking emails periodically through the holidays though and I think that’s likely to be the case in most schools. If it’s important then it’s likely they will get back to you, regardless of what the auto-reply said.
I’d give it a few days and then chase up through the HT’s PA/admin if you don’t hear.

If monday and Tuesday are INSET days then school officially closed to pupils on Friday and therefore they are not obliged to respond to your emails, especially if you email on a Saturday! It's just rude to email teachers at the weekend!

I would also bet on disaggregated training days.

The SENCo will hopefully reply anyway. I would try calling the school to see if anyone else can answer your question.

I don’t think it’s rude to email teachers on a Saturday, if they teacher is working and happy to they will reply, if they aren’t working they won’t check their email so won’t get it until Monday anyway.

Teachers probably aren’t in for INSET on the last two days of summer term in normal times due to them being disaggregated, but I would doubly bet they’re not in during a global pandemic.

Our school is closed to pupils and parents on training days. Teachers will be completing their training or whatever and then will be on holiday, which would explain the message. I don't agree that you shouldn't email on a Saturday though. The joy of email is that you can email whenever convenient and the recipient can read it/respond whenever convenient. It has been made clear in our school that you should not deal with emails out of hours, partly as that creates an expectation that all staff will do so. I'm sure your Senco will respond when they are next working. They might want a few days break though.

@OverTheRainbow88

I don’t think it’s rude to email teachers on a Saturday, if they teacher is working and happy to they will reply, if they aren’t working they won’t check their email so won’t get it until Monday anyway.

Agree it is absolutely fine to email on the weekend, it is only rude to expect a reply on a non-working day.

I don't normally email on weekends or late evenings, because several of the staff will reply within the hour. Yes, I know it's their choice whether to reply, but that doesn't mean I should disturb their non-working time. But this time it seemed important enough for me to reply as soon as I could, ie as soon as dh and I had made our decision on the options we had been given. I have had no replies, automated or otherwise, from the other addressees. Which is not a problem. It's just that this one felt like a bit of a shut-down, given that my reply was requested. Hopefully it's just a standard reply, and the Senco will still be looking at her work emails and taking action as necessary.

My schools are all open for staff INSET days today and tomorrow. I don't know how other schools managed to fit enough twilight sessions in before lockdown to make up 12 working hours 🤔

Our twilights are really heavily skewed towards the autumn term. New marking policy training, lesson observation training, CP training, teaching and learning working parties and prevent training all happened in the autumn term. Add in an extra 1.5 hours from a subject conference that was longer than the school day and some of the online exam board trainings that my department signed up for and I’d already done far more than my required hours before Christmas.That would be the case for the vast majority of my colleagues.
Our twilight training programme has continued since March too. I’ve done one myself through the LA and I know some staff that I line manage have done a few of them. If anyone was under their hours there were opportunities for training to make up the hours. Not that we’d quibble. Our staff work incredibly hard and go above and beyond for our students, the middle of a pandemic doesn’t seem like the right moment to start nickel and diming over training hours.

Schools I've worked in have tended to cram a lot of the twilight training into the autumn term too. That way if someone leaves mid year they've already got them to work extra hours, you see?

I'm surprised at the number who say their schools are empty. I know ours is spending the two Inset days frantically putting the school back together in preparation for the full return in September, now that the kids aren't there.

But if the staff have worked the hours already, gooseberry, they have worked the hours. The disaggregated training days will have been calendared as such from the start of the year. Staff may have holidays booked, plans in place. You can't make them come in unpaid during their holiday time.

Our school is doing all setting up towards the end of the holidays this year as who knows how the guidance might change over the next 6 weeks.

Our two July training days, commuted to twilight's, were easily done in the Autumn term. We had three two hour whole MAT after schools, multiple one hour medical training sessions, various other dept CPD events. On top of which, we've done over 24 hours online mandated cpd training (which SLT directed before realising we'd all work harder and more hour than ever during lockdown).

Yes, most of us will be in organising classrooms, displays, resources etc over the summer but it makes more sense (to social distance) to spread the staff out over the summer, not have 80 people in on the same two days.