Your school website provides the first impression to potential pupils, and it’s also a requirement to make sure it’s complying with Ofsted standards.
Ofsted will often review a school’s website as part of their inspection, so it’s essential to ensure it’s up to date, easy to use and appealing to visitors.
To help you reach the high standards inspectors look for, here’s a handy checklist of things to do to make sure your school website is the best it can be.
Your school’s name, contact details and ethos
Communication is key, and easy contact between parents and the school is something Ofsted will look for. Make sure your website’s got:
- Your school’s name presented clearly
- The ethos, aims and values of your school
- Postal address
- Telephone number
- Name and contact details of your headteacher
- Name and address of the chair of the governing body
- Name and contact details of the member of staff who deals with queries from parents and members of the public
- Name and contact details of your special educational needs coordinator
Your school’s admission process
It sounds obvious, but you need to tell people how to apply for your school in a simple and concise way. There’s no point confusing potential parents and pupils; it’ll just turn them away from your school. Be sure to include:
- Your selection criteria
- Your school’s admissions number
- Details on arrangements for disabled students
- How parents can apply
- Details of your oversubscription criteria
Behaviour and suspension/exclusion policies
Ofsted wants to see that your school can both teach and discipline students. Include:
- Your school’s behaviour and bullying policies. Also make sure they comply with section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006
- Details of your school’s exclusion policy
Equality and accessibility objectives
A school should be an environment in which everyone should feel welcome and like they can succeed. Make sure you’re laying out a clear plan on how you’re making students of all ethnicities, sexualities, genders and backgrounds welcome.
- How your school is fighting discrimination
- Your school’s equality objectives
- How your school complies with the public sector equality duty
- How disabled students are involved and helped in the curriculum
- How your school provides physical access to disabled students
Performance tables
You have to advertise your school and tell people why they should send their children there. There’s no better way to do that than showing the quality of education parents can expect.
- Key stage 1+2 results – average standards of reading, writing and maths as well as the percentage of students who have achieved higher scores
- Key stage 4 results – percentage of students who have achieved a grade of C or above in English and Maths. Also, include the percentage of students who have gone onto higher education, training or employment
- Link to national performance tables
Content management apps such as School Jotter can be a great tool to help make sure your website is up to date and complying with Ofsted standards. School Jotter can help you create and manage your website in a streamlined way, so you’ll easily be able to make a website that’s both appealing and easy to use for parents, pupils and other members of the public, but also will get you a good score from Ofsted.
For a more extensive checklist on extra things you can do to improve your school website, have a look at this.
