I have recently been thinking about cognitive load as it relates to AI and our wider experience of communication in schools, as well as the experience of students in classrooms.

The recent La Trobe University guide The Science of Learning and Generative AI (Tanti, Maddox & Phillips, 2026) draws attention to the limits of human attention and working memory. Effective teaching does not seek to make learning effortless, but rather to remove unnecessary cognitive clutter so that students can direct their attention towards thinking that builds understanding: retrieving, elaborating, connecting and applying.

The guide also considers the role of technology. Digital tools can help when they reduce unnecessary complexity or provide useful scaffolds. They can hinder when they create distraction, fragment attention, overwhelm with information, or do too much of the thinking on behalf of the learner. The research is about learning, not school communication, but it has me thinking about the communication environments we create in schools.

Communication requires work by communicator and receiver. There is work involved in deciding what to communicate, how and when. There is also work involved in receiving, locating, interpreting and responding. I have been wondering how schools might streamline and improve communication load for everyone in the school community.

When communication feels too hard

Schools have much to communicate, through a growing range of channels. McCrindle’s recent research (Renton & McCrindle, 2026) suggests that almost four in five parents experience some kind of challenge with communication from their child’s school. 26% identify too many apps and platforms as a problem, 24% receive too much information they feel is irrelevant to them, and 19% struggle to know where to find the information they need. Parents also identify communication that feels cold or impersonal, one-sided communication and slow response times as sources of frustration.

Of course, families want communication. They want to know how their child is going, and not only academically. McCrindle found that parents place equal value on behaviour and social updates, and grades and academic results, both at 55%. Parents report greater satisfaction with academic communication than with information about their child’s social and emotional wellbeing.

At my school, we never seem to feel that we have communication exactly right. Our annual parent survey usually surfaces some frustrations or frictions relating to communication. We continue to ask families what works for them and how we can do better, while interrogating our systems, processes and practices.

Parents are juggling workloads, life administration and digital noise, alongside family, social and community commitments. Some are navigating communication from multiple schools, for multiple children, and across multiple co-curricular activities.

One question we have been considering is:

How much work does our communication ask the recipient to do?

Does a parent need to search across platforms? Work out whether a message is relevant to them? Interpret what action is required? Find a date buried in a paragraph? Decide which staff member to contact?

Each additional step or question the receiver needs to undertake or ask is a small demand on their attention. Across a week, a term, multiple children and multiple organisations, those demands accumulate and navigating a school’s communications can feel too hard.

Making communication easier to find

At my school, our school app has become the central source of truth for whole-school communication. If the school has communicated something families need to know, they should be able to find it there. This reflects the wish from one parent in the McCrindle study for a single platform where notices, assignments and activities could be found without having to search for them everywhere. The broader findings point to the same frustration around multiple platforms and difficulty locating information. Schools are constrained, however, by the differing capabilities of apps and systems available. There are few genuine one-stop shops.

Every new communication channel or publication creates another place for information to live, another place for families to look and another thing for staff to maintain. For us, improving communication has therefore also involved de-implementation. The fortnightly whole-school newsletter has gone, replaced by smaller, more targeted communication through the app, while celebration happens largely through social media and the school website. Likewise, the traditional long-form end-of-semester academic report has been replaced by continuous reporting through our learning management systems, allowing families to see feedback closer to the learning rather than waiting months for a retrospective summary.

Predictability also helps to lighten the load of receiving communication. When families know where communication will appear and when to expect it, there is less need for constant checking. While not every communication can be anticipated, as a school we plan the cadence of communication so that regular communication can become expected. Rhythm and predictability make it easier for families to know where to look and what to expect, and for staff to plan what needs to be communicated.

What is worth asking people to show up for?

Communication is not only what appears in an inbox or app. There is also the volume of events families are invited, and sometimes expected, to attend, and which in turn staff are expected to plan and attend.

McCrindle’s research suggests that families value experiences that bring them into direct contact with their child’s learning and school community. Half of parents say they prefer attending student performances and creative showcases, 49% value one-to-one parent-teacher meetings, and 48% celebratory awards and graduation events. When asked what would bring them to an after-hours event, 58% nominate seeing their own child perform or showcase their work and 49% a private conversation with a teacher about their child’s progress.

As my school continues to examine an already busy school calendar, we are trying to be more judicious about what we ask busy families to come to school for, what might be better communicated asynchronously, and when physical presence and coming together matter most.

The same question applies to staff. An evening event that asks something of family time also asks something of the time of the teachers and other staff who make it possible. If someone has been at school since early morning, we need to consider how many after-hours events can reasonably sit within a week or a term.

Communication that is sustainable for everyone

This question of sustainability is increasingly visible in written communication. The McCrindle findings surface that parents value and expect responsiveness. McCrindle found that 21% of parents expect a response to a non-urgent teacher email on the same school day and another 45% within 24 hours. 66% expect a response inside 24 hours and 90% within 48 hours. Teachers, meanwhile, need time and attention to prepare, teach, give feedback, assess, record and respond to the many other demands of their work. When we consider the load of communications on school stakeholders, we need also consider staff.

There is a newer dimension to this, too. Generative AI has made it possible to produce long, polished and detailed correspondence with very little effort. A 2026 Browne Jacobson survey of school leaders in England found that 45% had seen an increase in complaints that appeared to be AI-generated or AI-enhanced. In the United States, the 2025 EdWeek Research Center survey found that 19% of district leaders and 16% of school leaders were certain they had received an AI-drafted complaint, with another 19% and 14% respectively suspecting they had. One in four educators who had received or suspected an AI-generated complaint said it took longer to respond. Respondents particularly described complaints as unusually lengthy, comprehensive and legalistic.

While AI can substantially reduce the effort required to produce a complex email, it does not reduce the professional work required to receive and respond to one. A teacher or school leader still needs to understand the concern, establish what has happened, exercise judgement and respond with care. We must avoid creating environments in which the sheer ease of producing communication contributes to greater volume, complexity and expectation for everyone.

This is also occurring within a changing Australian workforce and industrial context. Teacher workload is increasingly being scrutinised, made visible and, in some settings, more explicitly quantified. Recent agreements in independent schools, for example, require greater transparency around face-to-face teaching hours and extracurricular expectations, while national workforce policy explicitly seeks to reduce unnecessary teacher and school leader workload.

An expectation of responsiveness is an expectation of time. So is an evening parent event, a lengthy complaint that requires investigation, or another channel that staff need to monitor and maintain. These things cannot sit outside our thinking about workload simply because they have historically been part of the relational work of schools.

At my school, our expectations are explicit. Staff use approved communication channels and communicate in ways that are professional, transparent, purposeful and connected to their role. Communication with parents and caregivers should support constructive partnership and student wellbeing. Emails and phone messages are acknowledged within an agreed timeframe. Staff also set professional boundaries around after-hours communication. Routine work emails are not expected to be monitored or answered outside working hours, on non-working days or during leave.

Where to now?

Schools should work to design communication with an awareness that attention and time are finite for everyone in the system. For families, that might mean fewer places to search, communication that is relevant to them, and greater predictability about what arrives where and when. For staff, it means systems and expectations that recognise that reading, investigating and responding are part of the work of communication too.

Our not-insignificant challenge is to make school communication clear, relevant and easy to navigate without creating new layers of volume, complexity or expectation elsewhere. That requires ongoing attention to what we communicate, as well as to the systems, rhythms and expectations that sit around it.

References

Renton, S., & McCrindle, M. (2026). Communicating with today’s parents: Designing effective parent partnerships for stronger school communities. McCrindle Research. https://mccrindle.com.au

Tanti, M., Maddox, A., & Phillips, E. (2026). The Science of Learning and Generative AI: A guide for secondary teachers. La Trobe University. https://doi.org/10.26181/32775462