Viewing topic: School directory: reviews and ratings

As there have been a couple of 'incidents' involving the school directory recently, I think it may be best to make some clarifications for those who can't follow simple instructions.

New Terms of Use (already written up, to be published soon) will hopefully remove any ambiguity about who can or can't post reviews.

A little background: the review system is intended to allow teachers to relate their experiences of working in schools so that other teachers can get an at-a-glance view of what it is like to work there.

It should be clear to all that it is not intended for Directors of Studies, 'Academic Directors' or any other staff member not ranking as an 'ordinary teacher' (whether on contract or freelance) to relate their experiences of working at the school, whether to other potential Directors of Studies, 'Academic Directors' or ordinary teachers.

This logic is easy to understand, since most of the users of this site are looking for 'ordinary' teaching jobs, not positions of DoS or 'Academic Director'.

Any reviews that fall outwith the '5th-95th %ile', or in less pompous language, any that 'don't look right', will be investigated. The exact criteria I use for deciding what reviews fall outside the norm are, for obvious reasons, private information.

If the review is clearly not valid (not written by a teacher who is working or has worked at the school in question, written purely for the sake of altering a school's rating, written to counter another teacher's review) it will be removed.

To clarify the last point - I don't want the review system to be used for discourse about schools. It is not a forum - discussion of schools should be limited to the appropriate forums. Any reviews that are clearly posted as a response to a previous review will be deleted without any investigation.

Why? It takes time and effort and nobody pays me to do it, so I won't expend effort required to get involved as an arbitrator in a tit-for-tat exchange about a school. The reason for leaving a review about a school should be that you feel strongly enough about your experience there that you wish to inform others about it, not because you've seen something written that you disagree with.

Schools that clearly break the rules will have their ratings zeroed indefinitely. Again, I cannot justify the effort required to protect the reputation of a school that has no respect for the integrity of the system. I will have to assume that any further reviews or ratings are false.

So far English First and Language Studio are the only schools to have an indefinite zero due to misconduct of their 'Academic Directors'. I will apply the same rules to any schools that meddle with the system.

I ask that schools and teachers alike respect each other and respect the system. It is the only one that exists, and as long as people don't mess with it, it is reliable and provides teachers with an excellent resource for finding out what schools are worth working in.

To school management: if you have any problems with a review of your school, contact me stating the reason you think the review is invalid and I will investigate it. You may be required to provide such information as a full list of all teachers that have worked in your school over a specified time period. If any required information is not provided, the investigation will not be carried out.

Stating that 'all our teachers are happy' or that 'we have a policy whereby teachers must resolve conlficts with the management, therefore nobody can hold a negative view of us' will not be considered reason to investigate a review.

Even if a school has the best system of conflict resolution in the world, it is no substitute for conflict prevention, e.g. not appointing inappropriate persons to positions of authority, and preventing issues from repeating once they have arisen and been resolved.

One school manager tells me that he 'runs a tight ship', yet within a few minutes was able to confirm that some rumours about a member of staff's inappropriate conduct (which I had previously dismissed as exaggeration and hearsay) were at least 'to some extent' substantiated. The inappropriate conduct in question was enough to get one rank-and-file staff member of an EU company in St. Petersburg summarily dismissed.

I see this as an unacceptable way to run any business. In teaching, the main assets a school has are its teachers. If they are being treated unfairly and the school is not taking appropriate measures (e.g. not firing staff members on grounds of unacceptable conduct towards other members of staff), they deserve to be known as below-standard employers.