Every review on this site is negative

[splendid]

I have been coming to this site for years to research schools. For the past 2 years at least, there is not one school that sounds like it would be worth applying to or to send a child. Am I just imagining it? Or is international teaching not what it used to be?

[Monkey]

My best guess would be a combination of two factors:
1. An explosion of international schools around the globe. Take my current city for example; ten years ago there were 5 international schools, all of which were decent to amazing. Now, there's more than 50 international schools. As you can imagine, a lot of these schools are for-profit endeavors, set up as get-rich-quick schemes by people who have no background in or clue about education. So they genuinely are crappy places to work. This is a trend I'm seeing/hearing about in many cities all over the world.
2. People are more likely to leave reviews (of anything) when they've had a bad experience than a positive one. Human nature.

[PsyGuy]

You need to understand some of the factors:

1) This site is mostly a dump site for complaints, its one of the few places you can go too and get honest reviews, even the negative ones.

2) Rarely does an IT have a reason to leave a positive review, in general ITs that are happy feel their ISs are just doing what they are supposed to do, which is notably unworthy of praise. When you do read an overly positive review its usually leadership or a cheerleader.

3) There has been a lot of exponential growth in ISs but almost all of it has been in the third tier, and most of it on the bottom end of the third tier.

4) Parents can more readily afford the upper tier ISs and their expectations have changed that squeezes the middle. Its not longer good enough to just be okay or good.

5) IE mirrors the DE market with some lag of about 2 years, it wasnt until very recently that the global recession created a lot of DTs moving into ITs, which created a surge in the applicant pool, allowing leadership to be more selective, and not have to work as hard to retain ITs.

[alexout]

@Splendid

I've been coming here for years also and the negative reviews are depressing. Aside from the new, for-profit schools opening up all over with their growing pains, I also think ISR is THE place for international teachers to go to complain. There are other communities online where the opinions, advice, and help are much more positive, and I find myself going to them more often now. I am not going to list them; you can find them. Don't forget Facebook.

I worked recently at a school that has only blistering reviews here, even though there are many happy teachers there who keep renewing their contracts. Angry teachers post. Happy teachers don't, and those in between either don't care or, as in my case, worry about anonymity that isn't really anonymous in a small community.

I've been teaching internationally for ages. When I started we didn't have the technology at our fingertips that we have now. We live in a world where every opinion is broadcast without much thought. If you have a complaint, post it online. If you're angry, let it out online, "everyone" does. Unfortunately, more negative posts go online than positive posts. In some places it seems it's not cool to be happy and/or positive. And then there are the people who, for whatever reason, know everything better than everyone else and put down the majority of schools without personal experience with them. It sets a tone.

A lot of good happens in a lot of international schools. I know that because I've seen it personally, not because I've read it online. Wouldn't it be great if a site would celebrate that without being accused of being "cheerleaders?" But we've become too cynical, especially on this site.

[Vernacular]

I've worked at five of the schools reviewed on ISR. The majority of the posts about those schools are accurate, or were accurate at the time they were written. The relatively few propaganda exercises are easily detected.

[reisgio]

I think the paid side of site is actually quite positive for many schools that I know are aggrandized dumpsters. Look, those who do their research using this site (both paid and unpaid sides), school sites, Linkedin profiles for staff, on-site visits when traveling, etc. know there are very few good international schools. Just like there are very few good hotdog stands or Chinese restaurants. Most stink - the good ones, though, can be great! Thus the interest to hit the jackpot and what drives people back to this site again and again. Good luck this recruiting season y'all. I am excited to provide my color commentary again - I may even hit up one of the fairs this year undercover to give you the straight dope.

[Dredge]

I don't know... I feel like with the recruiting season upon us there have been quite a few inflated positive reviews. Maybe that's a coincidence;-).

[jschott]

I agree that places that house reviews are likely to get an abundance of negative ones. When people are happy, they tend not to need to vent their happiness. In fact, they might actually not want to spread the word in order to keep the place a relative secret.

What I've done in the past is contacted teachers actually working at a place. You can often find at least names and often contact information of teachers without too much trouble. One time this approach led me to believe that a place I was considering was a great bet. The other time it led me to turn down an offer.

On turning down an offer based upon personal conversations, though, I will say this: You do have to be careful of your source, whether written or spoken. For that reason, I think nothing beats a personal visit, when possible.

[senator]

International teaching is NO WAY as good as it used to be.

[PsyGuy]

@senator

Used to as in when? Of course it wasnt like it used to be, at one time it was all embassy ISs.

[Cooldude]

Total rubbish - your idea of "negative" is another person's idea of reality. It is very useful and forewarned is forearmed.

[nathan61]

I have written a few good reviews (for my last two schools), but I have not found reading reviews to be particularly helpful when looking for a job. Reviews are all out of date because things change very quickly at international schools.

[fine dude]

Only the following matter to me:
1. Cost of living & saving potential
2. Housing allowance
3. Teaching resources at hand
4. Diverse student body
5. Extracurricular load

Administrators can be a hit and miss. You can't control that.

[wrldtrvlr123]

fine dude wrote:
> Only the following matter to me:
> 1. Cost of living & saving potential
> 2. Housing allowance
> 3. Teaching resources at hand
> 4. Diverse student body
> 5. Extracurricular load
>
> Administrators can be a hit and miss. You can't control that.
--------------------
I mostly agree with this but would add things like 1- do not honor contracts,2-pay is late/withheld since this would generally be attributable to ownership and not administration.

[joe30]

Teaching resources and student body don't matter to me in the slightest (a school with less resources can't exactly lay the blame at your door if the lessons aren't great, and those schools probably have low expectations anyway). The stuff that matters is:

1) Disposable income and location. These are joint top since you need to know one before you can assess whether the other is decent.

2) Management. Bad management in any job can really have a negative effect on you, not only in the workplace but in your personal life too. My idea of bad management can be one of two 'types' of people: the first type is the sort that has really high standards, and expects you to share those high standards. The type who lives to work, often one of those annoying do-gooders who thinks teaching is a vocation rather than a job.

The second annoying type is micromanagers. The sort who come round for observations every week, want to see long lesson plans, whine when you leave school 15 minutes early etc.

The best management is the type that you never see or hear from - the sort that will just sit in their office, uncaring as to what is happening in the school so long as their paycheck is coming in. The type that does one observation a year but nothing ever comes from it because they don't really know what they're looking for themselves.

I do understand though that it's difficult to know precisely what kind of management situation you're getting into before you're there though. You can try asking subtle questions though, and just generally judge the interviewers personality.