The ratemyteachers.ie website where students post anonymous comments is worrying the profession, writes Louise Holden.
Visit a toilet in any school in Ireland and you'll find the original version of ratemyteachers.ie. As the only private space in school, the urinal wall has long served as a forum where students can vent anonymous loathing or covert affection for their teachers. Now, however, students have the privacy of the web. ratemyteachers.ie is drawing students like flies.
It's easy to see why 30,000 individual teacher ratings have swelled the website since it was established late last year. Discussing your teacher online is like discussing the boss around the water cooler - an irresistible diversion from the daily grind. What is not so easy to understand is the response of the Irish educational fraternity to what is essentially a fun site for bored pupils. Featuring ratings such as "She needs to wear shoes she can walk in", it's hard to understand why the site is deserving of serious comment.
That has not stopped teachers' unions publicly condemning ratemyteachers.ie. The TUI has called for the site to be blocked from school computers and a number of schools, including Gonzaga College and Sandford Park in Ranelagh, Dublin, have already done so. Schools blocking access are named on the website's "Wall of Shame" and a link is provided to another page that explains how to disable blocking software.
The site itself is not the issue, of course. The big story is the rush of Irish students to comment, moderate, and rake over its pages, which now contain ratings for 12,977 teachers from a total of 756 Irish schools.
Ratemyteachers.ie is the fourth manifestation of a web resource which was born in the US in 2001. The site has attracted legions of students; so far 7,000,000 ratings have been posted on more than a million teachers in the US and Canada. The site was launched in the UK last year and the total number of ratings has reached 8,797. However, Irish students have been a lot busier on the site than their UK counterparts since the Irish version came online in December 2004, with ratings now standing at more than 63,000.
A UK spokesman for the website admits that he is bewildered by the response here. "We have launched this website in four regions, but nowhere else has the reaction been so strong," says Seb Hague. "In the UK, people are less frightened of the concept and the commentary has been far less extreme. In Ireland the whole thing seems to have come as a bit of a shock."
The ratemyteachers site comes from a stable of websites operated by US internet company infiniteMEDIUM as part of their "ratemynetwork". Educators who feel threatened by the service should note that other websites in the ratemynetwork include ratemycat.com, ratemywheels.com and ratemyface.com. There is also an adult site where visitors are invited to rate other visitor's bodies.
The US version of ratemyteachers displays banner advertising from educational publishers and summer schools. The UK site is host to ads from Tesco and credit card company Capital One. Ratemyteachers treads the line between a public service and a commercial enterprise. On the one hand, its founder Michael Hussey claims on the website that the site is designed "to help facilitate a positive change in the way parents, students, and teachers alike look at the education system and therefore to encourage structural changes with regards to school and teacher choice". On the other, the site is designed to make money, clearly, and the company is in negotiations with potential advertisers in Ireland.
If ratemyteachers is really a labour of love, is the company prepared to labour on a not-for-profit basis? "Why do people ask this question so often?" Hague wonders. "A lot of schools run private profitable ventures. I don't see why commentators are focusing on the economic model rather than asking the question - is this is useful service? The aim of the site is to provide a useful source of consumer information."
When did students become "consumers" of education? How can the relationship between a teacher and a student be described in the langauge of the marketplace when, to a large degree, teachers are acting in loco parentis? Hague concedes that it is reasonable to object to the concept of rating teachers as if they were mere service providers. He does maintain however, that the site has an important role to play in bringing accountability to the teaching profession.
Many students agree. About 200 Irish student volunteers are giving their time to moderate ratings from their own schools. Unpaid, and running a serious risk of sanction by the school, these students obviously feel strongly about their fellow students' right to rate.
Oisín O'Reilly, vice president of the Union of Secondary Students (USS) in Ireland, understands the popularity of the site in a system that he says gives students little or no say in the delivery of their own education. "The only way to improve the education system for all is to engage in a long-term consultation with all of the stakeholders, including the students. We would like to see an independent monitoring body set up to look at some of the issues that are raised by contributors to this site. However, we do not support the public rating of named teachers by unnamed students. It's not fair to single out individual teachers trying to work with a flawed system. Different teachers have different resources available to them, different working conditions and different class sizes to handle. Many are making the best of a bad situation."
Rather than bringing about progressive change in the school system, O'Reilly believes that anonymous online ratings have the potential to create unproductive tension between the partners in education. The USS is labouring to boost the underdeveloped student council network in Ireland, thus giving students a voice through official channels. "Poor ratings may damage teachers' morale, and that's hardly of benefit to students. We should all be working together for a better education system."
