Yesterday I blogged about how only a third of emailed newsletters and circulars sent out by the Department for Education to schools and teachers are read by the recipients.

I also mentioned that you could choose who to blame for the low readership rate:

Who is to blame for this? If nothing else I suspect these figures are a good test of your political instincts: are you already thinking the blame lies with Michael Gove and the Department for Education for not making their messages more compelling or with the teachers who aren’t reading them in greater numbers?

One way of helping to allocate responsibility is to see how the open rate for Department for Education messages compares with those from Ofsted. Not well is the answer, for another FoI request from me reveals that Ofsted newsletters get a much better response, with overall a 44% readership rate across 2012 compared to the 33% for the Department for Education.

As I said yesterday, could do better Mr. Gove.

Note: as with the Department for Education figures, I have calculated the overall open rate based on total number of emails sent in 2012 and total number opened, rather than by averaging the percentage open rate figures for different sized email campaigns. The Ofsted email newsletters go to a different group from the DoE’s messages, and in particular include some non-schools / non-teachers.

* Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election and produces a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.