Google school reviews? We can't take them seriously

If you were to pick an institution in public life that didn't need to be further reviewed, you would think a school would be a good start. From formal visits from the inspectorate, to quality improvement officers sent in for classroom observations, to peer-to-peer review, the modern school gets examined constantly. And while the Rate My Teacher phenomenon, popular a few years ago, let the disgruntled have a go at members of staff, schools themselves had missed the modern obsession of reviewing everything. It's like TripAdvisor for schools – except people who leave holiday reviews on that website tend to have actually been to the place. Google school reviewers leave forthright views without necessarily ever having gone through the school gates.