Why you won’t get sales emails from us during the half term break
I’ve worked in schools for nearly 20 years. One of my personal bugbears is coming back to school after half-term to an overflowing email inbox. It takes mental effort to wade through those emails, separating the need-to-knows and ‘urgent’ from the nice-to-knows. Even worse are the emails from well-meaning and eager sales people. Even if their product is fantastic, I’m immediately turned off, because sending an email in school holidays suggests to me that they don’t understand the load that teachers carry.
Inbox dread
I’m not alone. Emails, although essential for communication, can contribute to the cognitive load that teachers and leaders experience every day. Research from Teacher Tapp revealed that 10% of teachers have over 100 unread emails in their inbox and 44% of headteachers receive over 50 emails a day. At the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT), we understand that this constant influx of messages can be overwhelming, impeding the much-needed mental and emotional respite that comes with a well-deserved break and inducing ‘inbox dread’ at the thought of the first day back.
At the NIoT, we are committed to being school-led. Our CEO Melanie Renowden explains what we mean by this in this blog in the TES. As part of this, we want to ensure our communications are sensitive to the ebb and flow of school life. As we strive to make a positive impact in education through our professional development programmes, we recognise the importance of respecting the valuable time of school staff.
So today, we’re making a public (and risky!) commitment - you won’t receive any sales emails from us during the upcoming half-term break.
Why?
Because we want to support teachers and leaders to have the time and energy to focus on what matters.
Teachers deserve a break
At the NIoT, we firmly believe that teachers deserve a break – a chance to recharge and focus on their personal well-being and start the new half-term refreshed and ready. We are making a dedicated commitment this half-term not to add to the inbox dread. We want to ensure that you can enjoy an uninterrupted time without the distraction of sales messages and promotional emails from us.
Teachers, of course, are not a homogeneous group. So while some teachers want to think about anything BUT school life during their break, for others, it can be a chance to catch-up, to reflect on their professional development needs, to learn and grow. For those teachers and leaders – we’ll still be here. We will remain responsive and available to assist you if you choose to reach out. We will still continue to share content on our social media channels and run our planned events.
No-one is fool-proof
One of the risks of saying this so publicly is that it doesn’t allow for human error, for an email to fall through the gaps. This is the first half-term break that we’ve made such a public commitment; we’ve briefed our teams but no-one is fool-proof. Let us know if we get it wrong, and we’ll learn.
We hope you enjoy a well-deserved break!