Parents targeting teachers with ‘aggressive’ emails since Covid outbreak

The union said parents and students had got into the habit of sending teachers accusatory messages since Covid hit. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Parents now feel they can access teachers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and have got into the habit of firing off “aggressive and accusatory” emails at any time of the day or night, a teaching conference has heard.

Teachers said that since the outbreak of the pandemic, the parameters of their job had become blurred, and parents now felt they could just “jump on the phone” or go on to social media to directly contact their child’s teacher outside school hours.