Nearly one in five teachers is facing an “unmanageable” volume of contact from parents, a poll suggests.

And a teaching union has warned that schools should not be “call centres”, as the government prepares to introduce expectations on how to communicate with parents.

In a survey of 4,812 teachers, 26 per cent of secondary school teachers said they spend more than 30 minutes a week contacting parents via phone.

Some 18 per cent of primary teachers reported the same in the exclusive Teacher Tapp survey for Tes.

The amount of time spent calling parents each week increases significantly for senior leadership teams: 49 per cent of secondary SLT staff said that they spent more than 30 minutes calling parents, with a similar proportion of primary SLT reporting the same (48 per cent).

And 20 per cent of secondary SLT said their time calling parents exceeds an hour a week, while the equivalent figure for primary SLT was 16 per cent.

In the poll, 19 per cent of teachers said that the amount of parent contact expected of them is “unmanageable”. The figure is even higher for SLT staff, at 28 per cent.

Pressure on teachers to contact parents

The data comes after the government’s recently published schools White Paper promised to launch minimum expectations for schools to communicate with parents, among various plans for improving parental engagement.

However, the NASUWT teaching union has warned that teachers are spending an increasing amount of time calling home for pupil behaviour and attendance reasons.

Among the motions tabled for the union’s 2026 annual conference, the Manchester branch has shared concerns about the “growing trend of teachers being instructed to contact parents to discuss concerns regarding pupil behaviour and/or attendance”.

The motion adds that some schools now require teachers to call home every time a child is sanctioned and to log this action, which adds to “workload and teacher stress”.

The motion reads: “Investigating pupil absence is an administrative task that should not be performed by teachers.”

The NASUWT will debate the motion as part of its conference, which will be held over Easter weekend at the start of April.

Calls home ‘must be proportionate’

Darren Northcott, the NASUWT’s national official for education, said that outside of safeguarding and specific pastoral roles, “teachers should not be expected to routinely phone parents or carers”.

The union reports an increase in school policies requiring teachers to make calls home for “every behaviour infraction, no matter how minor”.

Mr Northcott said: “Increasing expectations of parents on schools are also likely contributing to the increase in time spent on calls home.”

He added that while parental engagement is an important part of managing pupil behaviour and ensuring that pupils are learning, “contact needs to be targeted, proportionate and focused if it is to have a positive impact”.

“Where it begins to distract teachers from focusing on teaching and learning and becomes a workload burden, it risks becoming counterproductive for teachers, parents and pupils,” he warned.

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.