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.

echt
One of my top 'most ridiculous email' stories was someone who emailed me at 830am to complain that I hadn't bothered to give their DC help with their homework when asked and therefore they would NOT (yes they did caps) be giving permission for a detention and wanted me to explain why I had failed in my duty of care as a teacher, didn't care about progress etc.

Then by 11am, another email came through to me with the Head copied in 'just checking that you got my original email about DC homework as it's been over 2 hours and they are still awaiting confirmation that I will not sanction over their child's homework because it was my fault they couldn't complete it.

Which all seems quite dramatic and ridiculous, and then you add in that their child had over a week to do the homework, all materials were on the VLE, there were support materials on there too, i had reminded in class as well and offered help and the assistance I had failed to provide was not replying to the online comments at 10pm the night before homework was due.

Needless to say, they received a fairly abrupt call from me outlining why i was sanctioning the homework and why a 2 hour turn around on emails, and rude ones at that, is unreasonable and not conducive to positive home school relations.

Surely what’s needed is for parents to be given a realistic turnaround time ?

I’m another who does my email admin at 10 at night. It doesn’t mean I need - or even want - an instant reply. I expect teachers to reply when it’s convenient.

If something was urgent I’d be phoning.

I'm curious to know what the minimum threshold is considered to be for 'urgent', which a couple of posters have said would warrant a phone call to the school as opposed to e-mail.

And also, to HexagonalBattenburg, how many teachers have you needed to e-mail to work out that 'lots' of your DCs' teachers do an e-mail blitz at 8pm?!

My school has just written to parents to say do not email staff. Communication should be face to face or via phone call. I teach over 200 children. If every parent thought they could email me whenever they liked then it would be a full time job to reply to them all; rather than planning, marking and erm teaching which is my actual job.

I am in touch with a an nqt who was a trainee in my dept last year and she is now in a school where they are expected to respond promptly to email and she is considering leaving as the workload is too much. She was a great teacher and should be an asset to the profession.

I’m curious as to what emails people keep sending teachers that can’t be done via the office staff? (Not being goady, genuine question as it’s never crossed my mind!)

Earlywalker our former senior secretary got sixty e-mails a day on average from parents, and those were the ones coming through the admin@ address. It's the same parents though, over and over and over again, sometimes more than one in the same school day. Extraordinary. Obviously if there's a serious health problem that's different, but those cases weren't included.

It's the wording from one of my own kid's teachers about the post-bedtime email blitz. I've got a few staff contacts I have to email on occasion (I'm a governor as well so it's usually curriculum leads and my link areas) but actually I'm one who sends 99.9% of emails via the school office - think the time I've emailed a staff member about my own kids directly it's been in reply to them emailing ME (half the time it's "what website did you get that off that you used for your child's homework - can I have the link?!"), or one occasion where I needed to raise issues with the SENCO directly as there were major problems with a class teacher.

I’ve had 3 parental emails this week, 2 queries about an upcoming assessment and one about rescheduling a detention. All fine, and all dealt with in the evening.

I don’t want parents phoning me, or asking me to phone them. I don’t have a phone in my classroom and I have to walk to another building to use a phone. Then no one answers and you end up trying again later. I can’t do it in the evening as I’m not phoning from my phone so I’d end up staying later in school.

half the time it's "what website did you get that off that you used for your child's homework - can I have the link?!"

Are your DC at the start of primary HexagonalBattenburg?! I hope so! (as in, why are you doing their homework?!).

My school has just written to parents to say do not email staff. Communication should be face to face or via phone call.

Oh I hope this never happens in my Secondary! I LOVE the convenience of responding to an email reasonably quickly, when I have the time and can schedule it in and know it will be done.

Takes much less time than finding a phone, including one where no one else is in the room talking, leaving multiple messages on answerphone/having a long conversation or scheduling a full on meeting with only 4 frees a week.

It also means there is evidence of the conversation and sometimes this is very important!

Nope, definitely agree it’s fine to email when suits and the expectation of a reply is in a reasonable amount of time, regardless of what time the original email was sent.

Slightly off piste, but what actually do parents generally need to email teachers about? I don't have any idea how to contact my son's individual teachers - we do not get given their email,addresses. If I had a major issue (and so far I've not come close) I would contact the office and ask how to go about speaking to the teacher concerned or HOY for example?

I'm with you noble , especially the phone thing. I get so fucked off when someone tells me to phone a parent. I always prefer email.

Wondering how many HoYs are on this thread. I used to get 70 emial s an hour. Many were forwarded by said office staff, who could have , in all honesty, dealt with the query themselves. Systems don't work when office staff are seen a s sorting office.

Life is more peaceful now I not a HoY.

I, too, would rather email in the evening. I don't have time during the day.

sproutsandparsnips, the mass of emails are about admin errors, e.g. the electronic system has shown a student out of class when they were in. All teachers at my school (Victoria) can be contracted via email, it's far quicker than phoning, and leaves an evidence trail if things go pear-shaped, as opposed to the he said/she said of phoning.

Echt thank you.

Damien Hinds should be making sure teachers have a workload that is manageable, rather than making suggestions on how they how they schedule one that is unamanageable.

I'm afraid I have emailed ds's teacher quite a few times....but she has asked me to do it this way, as it is often very difficult for her to spend any time discussing an issue that she needs alerting to in the upcoming day, and sometimes it is difficult to talk about with others in earshot. We tried a home school book...but in the end emails are quicker and easier.

I have never had to do it with the dds and their school, but I think this is part of life with a child with complex needs.

Surely the main point of email is it can come through at a time convenient to the sender and be read/ replied to at a convenient time to the adresee.
Not everyone hs the time to email in the school hours, doesn’t mean they expect an asnwer late at night.

I'm with FallenMadonna, answering the odd parental email in the evening is the least of my work worries...working all day and then every night and all day Sunday every week...that is more of an issue...

I very rarely get parent emails. I think I've only had 2 since September, both about year 11 pupils and how their parents can support their revision.

Our hoys and hods field most of the contact with parents so they have a consistent approach. But again, they don't have tons, my hod probably speaks to 3/4 parents a week. My hoy speaks to a lot more but a lot of that is safeguarding stuff as she's the safeguarding lead in the school.

To fair I think it works both ways.

I regularly get emails from my DC's teachers complaining about their behaviour, informing me of something they have done/haven't done, asking me to spend time with them completing work they haven't finished in class etc etc. Usually when I'm at work, which is distracting - I'm supposed to be doing my work, but now I'm worrying about my child. They both have SEN so these issues crop up fairly regularly.

On balance though, I'd rather be kept informed than not, and I'd prefer to be emailed than an awkward phone call. And I also like having the option of emailing teachers too.

One of my DC attended a school that "didn't do" emails - you had to ring up or try and catch the teacher after school. In practice this was their way of totally dodging responsibility for anything, because there was no paper trail of what had be said/agreed. They were a shockingly bad school though, and I removed my DC eventually.

Nobody has access to our school email addresses and any communication between parents and staff has to go through the office or head and she decided if a teacher needs to be informed about it. I can imagine the rubbish that parents would email about

@RolyRocks but the point is as it has to be a phone call or face to face meeting it only happens when it is a significant problem, not a trivial matter so it doesn't happen very often at all.

I agree on workload, but then in my experience the schools that normalize all hour emailing also tend to be the ones with horrendous attitudes to staff workload and wellbeing.
The schools that take a common sense approach to email, don't normalize endless parental emails over trivial matters (e.g. hi Mrs pops, Timmy has lost his pe kit and yes he's 13 but we are most concerned, could you look for it) also tend to be the places with more sensible workload policies, more sensible marking policies etc.

It's not a perfect rule but a trend I've seen in my area.

Emails from my DD's school have a footnote on which says do not expect teachers to reply outside of office hours. I think that is great, as staff are entitled to end their working day at some point.

I send emails anytime but don't expect replies immediately, in fact if it is truly urgent then I would be phoning anyway. In office hours obvs.

What it says is -

&£&£&&(school) respects the work-life balance of its staff. If this email has been sent out of normal working hours, there is no expectation for you to provide an immediate response.

On the email which the teacher receives. I think it's a fab idea.