Hey teachers, leave those kids alone

By Mairead Lavery

Want to see if your favourite teacher is everybody else's favourite teacher? Well now you can. Irish secondary teachers are up in arms over a website that offers students the opportunity of rating their teachers. The website, ratemyteachers.ie is currently receiving over 15,000 hits a day from pupils throughout Ireland and allows those entering the website to make comments about their teachers.

Ratemyteachers.ie has only been up and running for three months and in that time over 160,000 pupils and past pupils have logged on to view the ratings and add their own valuations.

Teachers' unions have already voiced their concern about the website, objecting to the ratings system as unfair and overly personal. ASTI claims that the site offers students the opportunity to 'settle a score' with a teacher over a perceived slight and ratemyteachers.ie invites malicious comment, which could affect teachers' ability to teach. Instances where teachers have stopped teaching as a result of comments read by them on the site have been reported, although the Department of Education will not comment on these reports. Several teachers have made their feelings clear about what they describe as hurtful and untrue messages about their teaching appearing on the site.

One teacher told Journal 2: "Teaching is a stressful enough occupation these days without this website. I've known colleagues in tears over what has been written about them.''

The union has attempted to have the site closed, as has the Teachers Union of Ireland. Minister for Education Mary Hanafin has been approached by the unions about the site and has joined in their public condemnation of ratemyteachers.ie but has pointed out that her office is currently powerless to prevent the Internet site from continuing.

Some 23,148 teachers are rated on the website. There are currenly seven schools that have banned access to ratemyteachers.ie on schools computers, with many more expected to follow suit. However with current explosion in home computer ownership, this will not have much of an effect on the current popularity of the website.

Those running the website dispute the fact that students use the site to slander teachers, pointing out that almost 60% of the comments are positive. The website originators are based in California, where they are running similar sites in America, Canada and Britain.

Teacher ratings are on a scale between 1 and 5 on the website, with 5 being the highest possible rating recorded. The Overall Quality rating is the average of a teacher's Helpfulness and Clarity ratings, and is what determines the type of 'smiley face' that the teacher receives. Beside each teacher's name and rating is a face that gives an indication of their rating. A teacher with top marks will see a smiley yellow face with sunglasses beside their name and ranking.

Comments made about teachers on the site are strictly monitored by the site owners, who claim that, 'Any comments should be about their teaching, not their physical appearance. Every rating is reviewed before it is posted, and we reserve the right to delete comments if we see fit.'

Remarks about a teacher's personal life, appearance, qualifications, race, religion, sexual orientation or anything deemed inappropriate and unrelated to a teacher's rating are strictly forbidden.