The opinions and notes given to schools around the world by users of the Google Maps cartography application will be deactivated at the end of April, the American tech giant announced on Wednesday.
“This decision is due to the recurring presence of non-subject contributions, harmful and contrary to our policies,” said a spokesperson for the American company. “Pitoyable college”, “rotten” or “horrible teachers” are thus one of the comments that can be found on the pages of Parisian colleges, as noted on Wednesday.
The group specifies that this measure will apply to “general education establishments” worldwide and will be implemented at the end of April. Its deployment should take several weeks. The already existing opinions and notes will also be deleted.
“A place of settling of accounts for certain students or parents”
The Google MAPS application allows users to note on a scale of 1 to 5 the places where they go and leave all kinds of comments. If the practice is common for hotels and restaurants, it also gives the possibility of noting primary schools, colleges or high schools.
In recent years, several organizations such as the SNALC (National Union of High Schools and Colleges) and the SNES-FSU (National Union of Second Decrees) have denounced the appearance of these ratings. “This is good news that this is no longer possible because the space of opinions and rating had become a release, a place of settlement of accounts for certain students or parents, publicly,” reacted Sophie Venetitay, secretary general of SNES-FSU.
Faced with these notes and the various classifications of schools, the Ministry of National Education has set up “added value indicators” (IVAL) of high schools and colleges. The purpose of these indicators is to take distance from the raw success rates in the bac or patent, often the most scrutinized by parents, and which generally highlight elite, public or private establishments.
