'Email curfews do help cope with stress'


Following Nicky Morgan's statement that teachers should not email after 5pm, Paul Ainsworth, a former headteacher, suggests there are simple measures which can be taken.

It is fascinating to read of Nicky Morgan’s comments on the impact of email on teacher workload. I first wrote about this two years ago, such was my concern over number of emails in a school day and the stress of those received out of hours.

A regular complaint from my staff with a 90 per cent teaching load was the sheer volume of emails they received. Despairingly they explained they did not have time to read them.

They wanted to focus on teaching and not have emails flying across the interactive white board as pupils were working. Instead they chose points of the day to check emails but that took too long.

Many emails were the ubiquitous 'all staff' email. Common messages included lost personal items (car keys, a precious earring or a students coursework folder). Then emails of administration, report deadlines, focus of a meeting or a policy that ‘I need’ everybody to have.

"It is worrying enough when it is a colleague sending this to a senior leader but even worse is the parent sending a complaint to a teacher which causes anxiety all weekend." Paul Ainsworth

Trips are often a source of emails; who wants to go, who has been selected to go or a last gasp desperate plea for somebody else to help.

Some emails should never be sent. The teacher who has had a tough day and sends an impassioned plea about the behavior of a certain group of pupils, the whole school activity that one colleague feels has been badly planned, or the policy which has proved difficult to implement on that day. It is far too easy to sit there with steam coming out of your ears, to bash away at the keyboard and press send.

Once the email is sent, it's out there. All leaders have had tricky conversations with staff about an email that should not have been sent and other colleagues have accidentally shared personal information by pressing that button.

Plenty of such stories have made the national press, indeed the TV programme 'The Newsroom' had former lovers in the main roles who managed to share their infidelity to the whole staff.

Many schools have removed the 'all staff' email address from the ICT system. Instead staff have to ask a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) or the SLT personal assistant to send the email for them. It is amazing how this simple act reduces emails and ensures more controversial emails are not sent.

I am also concerned about the emails received and sent at 10:30pm on a week night, the late night Friday emails or in the middle of a Saturday night. It is worrying enough when it is a colleague sending this to a senior leader, but even worse is the parent sending a complaint to a teacher which causes anxiety all weekend.

"They wanted to focus on teaching and not have emails flying across the interactive white board as pupils were working." Paul Ainsworth

Why not stop servers pushing emails after 6pm until 7am the next day? This sounds an obvious solution but then think about the teacher asking a colleague for a certain resource, wanting to distribute new set lists or makes for an assessment.

The unintended outcome is that staff would use their personal emails possibly including pupil information, which would create another issue. Instead I would advocate stopping external emails being delivered between these hours, allowing teachers some respite from some challenging parents.

Senior leaders could make their own decision in school about hours in which they would not send emails and develop an email protocol with their middle leaders.

Perhaps now is the time to look at the list of 20 items of administration from fifteen years ago and update for the school world of today.

The two simple ideas presented here could be quickly implemented as some schools already have done. They could be the first items on the new start and make an immediate impact on reducing stress felt by many of our colleagues who work in schools.

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