When ratemyteachers.ie first offered Irish students the chance to grade their teachers anonymously, the response was modest. Then the teachers' unions got hold of the story and publicly aired their indignation, giving the resource more publicity than it could ever have wished for, writes Louise Holden.
Irish students stampeded the site and they're still coming. Within days of the unions' declamation last March the number of teachers rated on the sight had risen to 8,249. This week's figure stands at more than 39,000. An average of 800 students place comments on the site every day. More than 40,000 users are registered on the discussion forum.
Last week the site was relaunched with a new-look homepage and a new facility for teachers to write a rebuttal of ratings that they have received. So far the function has barely been used - many teachers are clearly not keen, or not bothered, to enter the discussion.
"Some teachers are in a permanent state of fury about the site, but most of us just ignore it," says one Dublin teacher. "It's usually the older ones who get really upset. Younger teachers understand that the web is an platform which is impossible to police and that it's a waste of energy getting riled about it."
It looks like the website is here to stay. Since the establishment of the first ratemyteachers website in the US in 2001, over eight million tings have been posted and the site now has domains for the UK, Canada and Ireland. Irish students have been the most enthusiastic users of the site, daily outrating their cohorts in other countries.
After a number of vague legal threats the Irish teachers' unions have accepted defeat on the issue and now no longer comment on the site. Meanwhile the ratings are multiplying, the forums are bustling and the advertising revenue is rolling in. Hang around the site long enough and you'll soon be subject to pop-up advertisements for ringtones and banner ads for electronic dancegames and Hollywood blockbusters.
So, one year on, what is this site really offering Irish students? A chance to vent some spleen in an advertising hothouse or a democratic voice in the education process? The site's objective, according to the corporate section of the website, is a wholesome one.
"The purpose of the site is threefold. First, it is 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. Secondly, it is a place for students and parents to have their opinions validated ... Lastly, ratemyteachers is a useful resource for the teachers who are open and self-assured enough to face the opinions of their customers, i.e. students and parents ... By studying the ratings, the teacher can often adjust teaching methods, helping create that environment of mutual respect, whereby their knowledge will translate more effectively to the mind of the student."
Staff and management at ratemynetwork, which is responsible for a host of sites including ratemyprofessor.com and ratemykitten.com, are difficult to pin down for further comment. In fact, the anonymous nature of the site makes it very difficult for any meaningful public discussion to take place. One school moderator who was contacted (each school's rating page is overseen by a volunteer student from that school) was not only unwilling to give his name, he declined to talk over the phone.
He explained, by email, his role in the administration of the site in Ireland.
"All good comments are kept on the system. Bad comments are always deleted in accordance with the rules of posting available on the site. [ I am] paid an hourly wage, the same as the national minimum wage. All comments are checked twice by two different people ... all bad comments let through the system are investigated and the moderator/admin who let them through must account as to why. [ There is an] average of 50-100 comments a day per moderator."
The moderator went on to say that "the system should never have been started. Moderators are finding that they cannot control the forums, posts etc. and it is getting out of hand. Only in Ireland has the idea of posting students up on the site developed."
Irish public resources, from buses to city-centre fountains, are vulnerable to vandalism. Ratemyteachers.ie is no exception. While the site's organsisers insist that the great majority of ratings on the site are constructive and well-intentioned, the model is subject to constant vandalism of the type that calls the entire project into question (see panel). If a parent or student consults a rating page for information, how is he or she to decipher the genuine comments from the mischief?
"This is not an ideal forum for students' concerns," says Oisin O'Reilly of the Union of Secondary Students (USS), which opposed the site in principle last April while acknowledging students' rights to comment on their own education.
"We have shifted our position slightly since then. Our members are very supportive of ratemyteachers.ie - a recent poll revealed that 70 per cent of USS members welcomed it - and we have considered using the site as an advertising medium for the USS. The site has 40,000 registered users."
However, O'Reilly reiterates his case that ratemyteachers is a poor solution to a real deficit in Irish education. "We met with the inspectorate of the Department of Education last week to discuss the introduction of SETS (Student Evaluation of Teachers). If students were invited to assess teachers' performance through official channels there would be no need for a website like this."
That's hard to believe. Irish students have embraced this website and are now using it to air all sorts of gripes about their schools through the forums. Judging by the volume of comments pouring onto the site every day, users have an insatiable appetite for "having their say" that goes well beyond any forum the Department of Education could offer.
It's a knotty problem that may well dog negotiations between students' unions and the authorities for years to come. An anonymous forum will forever be subject to abuse, but few students seem willing to go on the record with their grievances.