Top 10 Reasons Why We Removed the
Best & Worst Rated Schools List

We thought we had a good idea. We were wrong! Our members spoke and we listened.
Here’s the Top 10 Reasons we removed the Best & Worst List from the web site.

  1. If these are the best schools, heaven help us all!

  2. This is an interesting addition to the site. A 12-month or inception-to-date rating would be more accurate than a summary of monthly data.

  3. I nominate Tarsus American College for the “Worst” list. And how does a school being reviewed for the first time get the number 2 best reviewed slot?

  4. Example: Swiss International School Zurich North… the director/owner might have written the last review on the evaluation form. What about the web site of the parents/teachers www.experiences-at-iszn.com? It is obvious that some problems at this school are still not solved! My question is how come this school ends up in the best 1-10?

  5. This table is very misleading as every school has very good and bad reviews, and when you look at some of the schools in both sides of this table, previous reviews say the opposite!! Averages from the past year would be a much better indicator.

  6. The danger of these type of reviews is that they can harm teachers who currently work at or previously worked at the “worst” listed schools, just by being associated with the institution. Not too long ago I was short-listed for a position at a better known and highly regarded Int’l school and encountered the question: “You seem like a very qualified and capable candidate –why have you spent all this time at this second-tier school?”

  7. The best / worst list is good in theory, but in practice is misleading. There are plenty of reasons already mentioned for this. I know you had the best of intentions, but please take this feature down.

  8. I agree — Best/Worst list? –not a bad idea but not well thought through. As you can see from the many responses above, ISR needs to come up with a more statistically accurate or scientific way of ranking schools–otherwise it’s just a superficial popularity vote.

  9. In my opinion the table is misleading. It refers to the last posting which might be a response from the director of a school, who will obviously give high ratings. For example, the Sana’s British School in Yemen (8). Can the ISR team rate schools from the last 3 or 4 reviews to get a better picture?

  10. This ranking is clearly nonsense and is not useful at all. To attempt to use reviews on this site to evaluate schools requires some analysis and interpretation of the actual reviews.