As the deputy head of a large private school in Dubai, it is not uncommon to receive 300 emails a day or more.

They could be a parental concern, a time-sensitive request from the director, a calendar invitation to meet with the governors, an FYI about an event taking place three weeks in the future or a “reply all” on a staff email regarding parking.

Monitoring all this is exhausting. However, during 2020, we have seen email finally start to lose its position as the default mode of communication.

The end of email overload

In its place has risen something far more suited to the way teachers work.

What this looks like in your school will vary from campus to campus, and the technology you use to run your school.

But overall, as we have adapted to remote working and the need to be more efficient with communications, we have seen three new forms of communication emerge: collaboration, sharing information and dialogue.

1. Dialogue

Whatever platform you are using, it will inevitably have a “chat” function within it, which you can use to talk to colleagues within the organisation.

One major benefit here is that you can easily create groups related to a bespoke subject, such as International Day, for form tutors of a particular year group in the build-up to a big event.

You can also have more relaxed chats with colleagues, as the thread function of these systems lends itself to more informal communication.

You can share documents and collaborate on these within this group and they will be stored in this “chat” forever. It acts like a folder for that particular topic and reduces the need to search through hordes of emails looking for that one particular PowerPoint that was shared in an email three months ago.

These groups are also really useful if you want to test the temperature of an idea among a particular group of staff. For example, my Academic Leadership Team group chat - consisting of academic middle leaders - often votes on particular ideas, such as the length of a parents’ evening appointment in Year 11 versus Year 13.

Being able to input a simple vote function within this group means I have immediate feedback from a key group of staff with minimal effort on their behalf. I know that this function is also used within departments, and other areas of the school, to gain feedback on ideas and help promote staff voice.

If you are still to take advantage of this form of communicating I highly recommended it.

2. Collaboration

Within “chat”, whatever system you use - whether it be Microsoft Teams, Google Shared space, Slack or something else - it will likely have the ability to create collaboration spaces for staff to work together on particular documents. In most tools, these are referred to as “channels”.

A particularly useful function is the ability to chat within a channel in relation to a specific area of content. For example, the science department has a channel for each year group within the overall science faculty team. Each channel stores the curriculum content, including lesson resources and assessments.

Within each channel, there is the opportunity to discuss these resources and collaborate on them.

This means that all chat related to this particular item is isolated within this area and isn’t shared with others to whom this information would be irrelevant. The ability to tag members of staff in particular posts means that attention can be drawn to very specific points that need action.

This has helped greatly reduce email overload.

3. Posting information

For more formal communication, there is the option to create “announcements” within a team.

As a through school, we have dedicated groups for the primary school, the secondary school and the whole school. When there is a particular piece of information that needs to be communicated to the whole school, this can be done through an announcement on the whole-school area.

It is possible to mark this announcement as important, meaning that notifications will be repeated on the members of staff’s device until they have seen it.

This is really effective for things such as updates to the school calendar or information on school photos in the coming week. Staff are able to come to this thread at a time that is convenient for them with an understanding that this is communication intended for the whole staff.

While I still receive more than 300-plus notifications within a school day, the nature of the communication is more efficient and coherent.

There is absolutely still a place for email in schools, particularly for communication with parents and external agencies. However, gone are the days of fearing the dreaded ping in your inbox. This is one thing we can thank 2020 for.

Paul Gardner is secondary school deputy head teacher at DIS Dubai. He tweets at @DubaiDeputy