Mental health toll of parents’ direct line to teachers

TEACHERS have spoken about the impact of the pandemic on their mental health and how parents now feel they should have access to them 24 hours a day.

At the Nasuwt teaching union annual conference in Birmingham, member Sharon Bishop said “parents and students now feel they can access teachers 24 hours a day, seven days a week since the pandemic”.

She said: “Many of us have been told to download apps such as ClassDojo [an educational tech app] to our phones, and parents and students have got into the habit of firing off emails 24/7, with the banal, bizarre, and sometimes, more worryingly, aggressive and accusatory messages.

“They seem to feel they can access us 24/7. Working hours and parameters have been blurred since the pandemic.

Member Kat Lord Watson, who worked in a private school in Scotland during the pandemic, said “the knowledge that the parents were watching you and reading you on their WhatsApp groups was also quite incredible”.

In a study of the impact of parental complaints on teachers and school leaders that she conducted, one teacher said: “The direct line to staff has become much more rapid and the willingness to just jump on to the phone and make a complaint is definitely much more there than it ever has been.”

The conference voted for every school to incorporate welfare into their curriculum, for Nasuwt to lobby Government to include mental health first aid training as a compulsory part of teacher training and for any education recovery strategy to have teacher and pupil mental health “at its core”.

Member Zoe Lynch, proposing the motion, said: “Since returning to school many of us have had children coming to us with their issues on a larger scale than ever before.

“Dealing with secondary traumatic stress has been emotional and mentally hard for all concerned, the children and the staff.”

Member Michael Poulton said a friend and colleague had died during the pandemic through suicide.

“He didn’t lose the battle to Covid-19. He lost the battle to mental ill health, and he took his own life during the first lockdown,” he said.

“There are people who have lost loved ones to Covid, lost loved ones to mental ill health. And do we know how to cope with it?”

Data from a Nasuwt survey of more than 4,300 respondents found nearly half – 48% – had tested positive for Covid-19 this term.

Patrick Roach, Nasuwt general secretary, said: “The pandemic has strained us all, but teachers and their students have been tested with unimaginable pressures over the last two years.

“Soldiering on against the odds is not a sustainable model that encourages healthy workplace practices, nor does it support teachers to perform at their best. As a result, we are witnessing high prevalence of burnout amongst the school workforce.

“Teachers should have the right to disconnect; they should have the right to a family life.”

Parents and students have got into the habit of firing off emails 24/7, with the banal, bizarre, and sometimes aggressive and accusatory messages Sharon Bishop