Damian Hinds says teachers shouldn’t reply to emails from pushy parents after hours

[noblegiraffe]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6621263/Teachers-ignore-emails-pushy-parents-says-education-minister.html

Apparently too many teachers are replying to emails from parents at night.

“He suggests parents should only use only official channels and that teachers should spend a set amount of time per day answering queries.”

Er, but during the day I’m teaching and so at night is when I’ve got time to deal with emails? Replying to emails during the school day will only push other work into the evenings.

I much prefer emailing parents to phoning them too.

It might be a good idea to ignore or delete any e-mail sent after 9pm :)

As a working parent, many of my personal emails are sent after 9pm (and I hope wouldn't be routinely discarded for that reason!) however I certainly wouldn't expect staff to respond at that time, as it is their personal (not working) time

Surely the beauty of email is that they can be sent at a time convenient to the parent and responded to at a time convenient to the teacher? I may send an email at 9pm, so that the teacher will be aware of something in the morning....but I don’t expect her to look at or reply to it before the following day.

The point about the post 9pm e-mails is that they seem to be less coherent than ones sent earlier in the day, or early the following day, for whatever reason.

I think he has a point.
The schools I've worked in that have been good for workload and morale are ones that have a 2-3 day policy for turning around parental contact. If it's urgent then a member of SLT or Head of Year can respond.

Some expectations are too much. (E.g. last week I had a request for a same day phone call but after 7pm because they were at work / I've known some parents report staff to senior leadership by sending a 2nd email on the same day saying 'following my previous emails below, I would appreciate a response as your member of staff has failed to reply')

I don't reply to emails outside of an extended working day (8-6ish) because it puts pressure on other staff to do the same. If I want to prep out of those hours then I'll draft it, save it and then send the following morning. But I'm the same with online homework platforms too and think staff replying to students 1030pm the day before homework is due means there can be pressure on other staff to do the same ' because I was stuck and Mr blogs...'

I email staff out of hours because I work and don't have access to my personal email during the working day.

If a matter is urgent, I will phone the school so for me email is a less intrusive and less time critical way of communicating with teachers.
Some I know only check their emails during working hours but I also know many are at school till 5, do family stuff then work through the evening once their kids are in bed. I'm always slightly mortified to receive emails from school staff out of hours though.

jessica That makes total sense. I don't mind receiving them out of hours for the reasons you outlined.
I only object to the expectation of unreasonable turnaround and unreasonable hours of contact (like the person wanted a phone call at 7pm)

I suspect pushy parents expect a response to their 7pm email by the next morning. Which is not on. Perhaps if the school announced that emails will be responded to within, say 3 working days, that would take the pressure off.
It's not easy to ignore an email if it pings to say one is in your inbox. And if it's an angry or critical one, probably not easy to sleep without dealing with it.

Our school doesn’t allow parents to email staff. All email communication goes through the main school office and is only passed on to teachers in really rare circumstances. This is my 10th year working at the school. I’m now SLT and spent 7 years as HOD. I’ve only had a handful of parent emails forwarded to me in all that time. I think he’s spot on and schools need to be protecting their staff from this. We wouldn’t get the results that we do for our students if we wasted staff time with stuff that can be dealt with by admin staff.
We also aren’t allowed to email other staff outside of office hours. People moaned a bit about that at first but it’s actually made a big difference to the working-all-hours culture.

For dd's school email is one of the official communication channels. I might send an email in the evening, but would not expect a response the same evening and would assume teacher would read the email the next day.

Why are you in contact with the school so much, Jessica?

I don’t think teachers should be using their personal time to respond to emails. I might well send an email at 9-10pm but I expect them to pick it up at a time appropriate to them the next day (or later). I don’t think it’s fair to expect teachers to be on call 24/7. I would be interested to know how he is going to provide protected time during their contracted hours though to deal with these emails. It’s no good saying just don’t do it but then expecting teachers to slot it into an already busy working day.

DumbledoresApprentice
That’s a good policy.

But we use our ‘personal time’ to complete other school work. If I have to respond to parental emails during the school day, it will not mean I stop working in personal time, it will just mean I’m doing the work I couldn’t do when I was at school because I was dealing with my email.

Thats fine no one is saying you can’t manage your time as you want to do. What’s being said is that it shouldn’t be expected that teachers spend their evenings answering emails from parents and parents should bear in mind that only most urgent cases will be responded too. Do you like getting emails from parents? Wouldn’t you prefer a system where the communication to the school is more controlled and parents are encouraged not to send staff emails?

What is really being said is not that you can’t manage your own time but that parents need to stop treating teachers as public property ready to respond to their every whim and request at all hours.

I've emailed teachers at 2/3am before. Of course I don't expect a reply at that time! Its just when I get around to doing my personal admin.

I will usually preface the email with 'please ignore the timing of this email, I don't expect a reply outside of normal working hours'

An email is miles away from a phone call or a text message.

I am mortified when my son's teachers reply to emails I sent in the evening that same day. And most of them do. They are an amazing bunch. I don't know how they do it.

Like Dumbledores school all our email go to a admin@ address anyway. However I have always had a personal reply from the actual teacher.

I've sent ones to my kids' teachers but I've always done it with a "sorry I know it's 6pm and I don't expect a quick reply to this" and then been utterly mortified when the teachers have replied at 9pm! I've also told one teacher who rang me about something utterly inconsequential at like 5pm at night on a Friday evening to go home and drink wine.

Lots of my kids' teachers seem to spend early evening with their own kids and then do an email blitz about 8pm or so - as long as they're choosing to do that that's fine but if they're being expected to do it I'd be really annoyed (and to be honest I'd be on the head's case with my school governor hat on)

I don't answer parental emails after school in the evening. This is because it's always possible it might be something that I'll end up stewing over all night and, as they say, harsh my cool. :o

I'm an early riser so open all emails at 6.00., think of replies to difficult ones, and send them once I'm at school. If it's something very simple, I answer before school.

I should say that I've never had parent get the arse about not getting response the same day.

I think parents need to make it clear that there is a, say, three day turnaround expectation for emails. Parents send emails at 10pm and say 'oh I don't expect an immediate reply', but actually expect it answered before school starts the next day, then get snotty when they don't receive that. Urgent messages should be sent to the office, non urgent issues should be clear that there may be several days before responding.

I think he’s got a point.

Teachers shouldn’t be expected to spend their evenings replying to parent emails. The policies mentioned above about 2-3 day turnarounds, or all emails going through some central admin email address, sound sensible.

I can understand parents emailing in the evening because work commitments or whatever mean that’s a convenient time for them to email, but there shouldn’t be an expectation placed on teachers to be replying the same evening.

But I also don’t want the situation where I’m told I can’t reply to emails in the evening. It’s more convenient for me!

I don’t mind most emails from parents, they’re normally perfectly reasonable and I don’t get that many. I’ve had some horrific ones too though of an evening and that has felt like an invasion of my personal space. Although getting them in school hours wouldn’t be much better tbh. The rule should be no stinky emails.

I have been working nights for the past couple of years, so have used my break time to send e-mails many times.

I never expect or even hope for a reply outside of the recipient’s normal working hours however. I hope no-one thinks otherwise!