A new website on which students can rate their teachers' performance is unsettling schools, with teachers worrying that it will be misused.
Ratemyteachers.com has been running in overseas schools for several years. It has just been launched in New Zealand and has already prompted three teacher ratings to be posted.
Teachers are rated on their easiness, helpfulness, clarity and popularity.
Ratemyteachers.com founder Michael Hussey says the site provides a useful service.
"A question we ask ourselves each time we review a rating is does this have to do with what's happening in the classroom? If it isn't then we remove it before anyone even sees it," says Hussey.
For students it is a chance to put the shoe on the other foot and do some grading of their own.
"I think it's useful not only for students but for teachers as well, because then the teachers can actually come on here and check how they're doing or how kids are rating them and they can improve on their teaching," says student Emma Bates
But the secondary teachers' union, the PPTA, says there are already examples of other websites which are used at the moment to effectively defame teachers.
PPTA president, Debbie Te Whaiti, says the union is looking at the legal implications.
The Teachers' Council says the website has destructive elements and could bring the profession into disrepute.
They will be monitoring the site.
But there is not much schools can do about it, especially if it catches on here like it has overseas - where more than a million teachers have been rated.
