Complaints and reporting

How to report a post

Every review, question and answer has a Report link underneath. Use it: it tells us exactly which post you mean and asks for everything we need to act quickly. For anything else, email [email to be added before launch].

How quickly we act

• We aim to act within 48 hours on reports that a post is: it's untrue and damages someone's reputation; it names or identifies a person; harassment, threats or hate; it reveals private or confidential information; other illegal content.
• We aim to act within 7 days on everything else, such as spam or a post that doesn't seem genuine.

If you leave an email address, we aim to tell you what we decided and why. If you disagree, reply and, where possible, someone who wasn't involved in the first decision will look at it again.

If you think a post is defamatory

Choose "It's untrue and damages someone's reputation" on the report form. To be dealt with under the UK Defamation Act 2013, your complaint needs:

1. your name and email address;
2. the post you mean (the Report link fills this in);
3. what the post says and what you understand it to mean;
4. which parts are untrue, or are opinions with no facts behind them, and what the true position is.

Posts on The Teacher Insider are anonymous and we have no way to contact the people who wrote them, so we can't pass your complaint on to them, and we don't pass your details to anyone. When we receive a complaint with everything above, the post normally comes off the site straight away while we look at it, and we aim to decide within 14 days. If we conclude it's an honest opinion based on first-hand experience and follows our guidelines, we may put it back, and we'll tell you. While it's hidden, the school's page says that a review is hidden while a complaint is checked.

If you wrote a post and want it removed

Use the Report link on your post, choose "I wrote it and want it removed" and enter the removal code you were shown after posting. The post comes down straight away. Without the code we can't tell that you wrote it (anyone could say so), so we treat the request like any other report.

If your post was declined or removed

We can't contact you, because we don't keep your details. If you think we got it wrong, email [email to be added before launch] with the school, roughly when you posted, and why. Where possible, someone who wasn't involved in the first decision will look at it. You're always welcome to write a new post that follows the guidelines.

Schools

• Schools can't pay to remove or change reviews, and we don't sell reviewers' details. We hold almost none.
• A school can report a factual error or a post that breaks our guidelines, like anyone else. We apply the same rules.
• We don't know who wrote a post: reviews, questions and answers are submitted without names, emails or accounts. We'll only release information we hold where the law requires it, for example under a UK court order, and only what's required.

Authorities and the EU

Regulators, law enforcement and authorities in the UK and the EU can reach our single point of contact at [email to be added before launch], in English. Our legal representative in the EU is [EU representative to be added before launch].