The International Schools Review Forum

I just noticed another recent review about a school in Switzerland. The teacher wrote the 11th completely condemnatory review after leaving in disgust. I really wonder about such teachers. They themselves either read the reviews and ignored them or didn't read them in the first place. So either they write a review in order to discourage people such as themselves or they have finally found ISR only after moving countries and jobs.

I have never understood this mentality. What is with these people?

Some never knew about ISR. Some had reasons to take the job anyway. Some just keep writing more reviews on top of the ones they wrote last year and the year before. And at least one applicant assured me that she writes a bad review for any school that doesn’t offer her a job. So let’s call it a mix.

I don't know about others, but when I see only one or two negative reviews for a school, I tend not to pay them much attention. However, if I see many negative reviews, especially if they repeat the same ideas, I find that pretty convincing that there is a problem at the school.

Also, it is important to know if negative reviews from a year or two ago are still valid, and more recent negative posts can confirm this. Things can change so quickly at a school as an admin comes or goes.

So for those reasons, I'm grateful for people who bother to post a negative review even though there might already be other reviews for the same school.

As for taking a job with bad reviews, I did that for my first overseas job. I saw all of the bad reviews and realized it wasn't a great school, but it was in Europe and that was where I wanted to be, and I know it is hard for a first-time IT to land a Europe job. I was prepared to keep my head down and see the job as a two-years-and-done stint to get my foot into the door of the Europe circuit. And it worked! I still left a negative review when I left to be sure that people would know that the negatives other people had already written about were still current.

For some teachers the allure of a particular city or country alone can justify going there. I would guess Switzerland (and Europe in general) is high on many peoples lists. Then you have Asia, look at places like Hong Kong, Thailand, or Vietnam which all have schools with pages and pages of bad reviews on this site. Yet when was the last time you heard of schools in these countries needing to look hard for teachers?

If the city is awesome, the money is good, and there are lots of travel opportunities, some people are fine putting up with a mediocre / crap job for a few years. They can still write a review for a crap school to let people know what they are getting into.

I think a lot of those reviews are by teachers who didn't read the first 10 negative reviews before accepting the job.

For those who did read the reviews and accepted te job anyway, it was either (as others have stated) their desire to live in a specific city/country, the fact that they really needed a job so they took what they could get, or a combination of the two (where they first tried the better schools in that city but ended up only getting an offer from the crappy school).
For some teachers, there are few schools that are so bad they can't survive two years, as long as the schools pays their salary as promised, so they just suck it up and accept the job - better than being homeless.

Also, lots of negative reviews are not very truthful, or only somewhat truthful, and sometimes the same person posts multiple negative reviews for the same school to get their revenge with the admin that fired them. As many people know this they might disregard the reviews, or are persuaded by a positive review they read elsewhere. Sometimes that works out, other times it does not.

I also think after being an IT for awhile, you learn to read between the lines and winnow out the essentials for you. I take them with a grain of salt, but look for patterns over years...

Agreed--there is a difference between "leadership is a bunch of sociopaths" and three consecutive reviews that talk about the poor resources or problems with the health plan. The former is sour grapes; the latter is a warning to consider a specific issue.

Truly horrific train wreck ISs dont exist for very long. If no one will work there, than the IS doesnt have faculty and doesnt ultimately have students. This means that while there are ISs that a majority of ITs find toxic, there is a minority group of ITs who can function or even thrive in such ISs. Some ITs like disorganization, a lack of standards, a lack of a functioning curriculum and sociopathic leadership, because for a number of reasons they themselves are disorganized, dont put resources or effort into their lessons, are content and allowed to do a lot of sitting and independent work or direct teach, dont have to stay late, get paid on time, their housing isnt bad and they themselves are adept at schmoozing it with sociopathic leadership. Sometimes that system breaks down despite knowing ahead of time its an unstable system to begin with.
Some ITs have outside factors that really make the quality of the IS and the work experience a non-priority. Its a job youre not exactly supposed to like it too much, if you did they wouldnt be paying you coin youd be paying them and it would be a hobby. Some ITs care only about location, they would put up with anything to be in certain parts of the WE or Asia. Some of them are following a spouse who is outside IE and there just arent a lot of options. Some ITs have to settle for the bottom of the ISs in a certain location because thats where they got an offer.

I also tend to agree with @Sid, many ITs dont know about ISR.
I also tend to agree with @buffalofan if the city is awesome, the coin good and the private life enjoyable you can make a bad ISs tolerable, even enjoyable. My advice is typically to choose an IS based on location factors not the IS. If the IS sucks, well okay lots of people have sucky jobs but then you have all that the location has to offer outside of the IS and weekends and holidays. If your location is horrible though than you really have nothing but work to look forward too everyday, work becomes the only focus.
I disagree with @Thames Pirate, leadership being a bunch of sociopaths may be sour grapes but it may also be (and more likely) that leadership is a bunch of sociopaths.