UPDATE JANUARY 2016
Make Your School Website OFSTED Outstanding 5 Top Tips to go above and beyond the essential
plus mandatory check list for your school website “I go into a lot of schools where the website is not up-to-date. If your website has not got the information it needs it does become a leadership and management issue. Curriculum statements, how you spend the Pupil Premium, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development – it’s a key tool.” Elaine Long, Inspections Specialist and Inspector 2011-2015
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Notable Changes to Requirements in January 2016 In January 2016 OFSTED made a number of changes to the information schools need to provide on their websites. We have been through the information thoroughly and below you’ll find updated and a detailed checklist on how to make sure you meet and exceed the requirements. You may find it useful to come on our OFSTED Ready Website Workshop or talk to us about refreshing your website and we’ll make sure you are more than compliant.
Ian Richardson - Director & Co-Founder of Schudio
What’s changed? Wording changes, minor changes to Pupil Premium, Yr 7 Premium & PE Premium NEW Requirement in SEN Report Governors section changed to the MUST information is in main report and SHOULD information is in a new section *full details of changes are in the latter part of this report, all pages are marked as UPDATED
Why keep your website OFSTED compliant? At a key event last term about OFSTED inspections, Elaine Long (Inspections Specialist and Former Inspector) told delegates that chool websites are often a problem, Ms Long warned: “I go into a lot of schools where the website is not up-to-date.”
”If your website has not got the information it needs it does become a leadership and management issue.” Curriculum statements, how you spend the Pupil Premium, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development – it’s a key tool.” Curriculum statements in particular help inspectors to start to “assess the breadth and balance of the school’s curriculum”, while other key detail includes SEN information reports and the promotion of equality.
Photos and quotes sources from www.sec-ed.co.uk
Key Tips from the Source
She added: “If you are having a short inspection because you are a good school, the more information you can give on your website the better. A good inspector will spend a lot of time going about the website. This frees up more time for them when they are in school to focus on the things you want them to focus on.”
… before we get to the detailed checklist, here’s our Top 5 Tips of going beyond the required minimum … Photos and quotes sources from www.sec-ed.co.uk
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Top Tip #1 A domain name that makes sense! Your site needs to be easy to find and having a domain name full or numbers and random letters makes it harder.
Make sure you have a domain name that includes your school name and has a simple extension i.e. .co.uk | .org | .com | sch.uk
Ditch your NGFL domain if you can!
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Top Tip #2
Warm and Fuzzy Welcome from the Headteacher OFSTED need to get an idea of your school’s ethos and values as quickly as possible. They also want to see who runs the show.
If you don’t like having your photo taken GET OVER IT! (look at the state of me!)
Write a welcome message to your website visitors, include a photo of yourself and explain what you personally aim to achieve at your school.
There is no better way to make a big impact to people visiting your site for the first time.
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Me!
Top Tip #3 Twitter Feed Twitter is a brilliant way of communicating with your school community and it shows a current, relevant attitude to engaging your audience.
It is really easy to add a Twitter Feed to your school website and your website provider should be able to help. (and it shouldn’t cost you anything!) The basics? Set up a Twitter account which has a name that makes sense, tweet regularly and engage with other users. There’s lots of great tools to help you really get cracking but try to avoid sending a long list of tweets once a week, make your Tweets engaging and use relevant #hashtags.
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Top Tip #4 Gallery of Student’s Work One of the recent updates to OFSTED requirements is your Curriculum information and a great way of including this information is to back it up with a selection of work completed by your students.
Use a Blog to share work completed by each and every class or have a dedicated photo gallery to share what your students have been up to.
If you don’t have either of these available as an option create a page that you keep up to date regularly with relevant, interesting content. It won’t take long!
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Top Tip #5 Content Translation on Every Page Many schools have lots of EAL students and how well you engage this part of your school community will most certainly be evaluated by OFSTED.
By adding a good translate feature to your website you will be inclusive of all your users and provide a really useful tool.
Google Translate isn’t perfect but it’s LOADS better than it used to be! It is also really simple to include a translate feature in your site using their features. The Schudio solution empowers you to choose only languages that are relevant to your community so families feel like they’re being given a bit more thought.
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The Stuff you have to do … “Information on the school’s website, including its statement on the use of the pupil premium, in primary schools the PE and sport premium, the statutory sharing with parents of curriculum information (so the lead inspector can start to assess the breadth and balance of the school’s curriculum and whether it is likely to promote preparation for and an appreciation of life in modern Britain), the special educational needs (SEN) information report, the presence and suitability of the safeguarding guidance, taking into account current government requirements, information about the promotion of equality of opportunity and other information for parents” School Inspection Handbook - September 2015
Sometimes interpreting what OFSTED are looking for can be time-consuming in the least. Use our easy-to-follow check list over the following pages and you’ll have everything that is expected of your school website fully covered before OFSTED arrive. If you need any help, let us know!
Statutory Website Requirements School Contact Details
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Statutory Website Requirements Admission Arrangements
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Statutory Website Requirements OFSTED Reports
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Statutory Website Requirements Exam and Assessment Results
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Statutory Website Requirements Performance Tables
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Statutory Website Requirements Curriculum
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Statutory Website Requirements
Behaviour Policy
Sample available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/behaviour-and-disciplinein-schools
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Statutory Website Pupil Premium
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UPDATE JANUARY 2016
Statutory Website
UPDATE JANUARY 2016
Year 7 Literacy & Numeracy Catch-up Premium
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Statutory Website
UPDATE JANUARY 2016
PE & Sport Premium for Primary Schools
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Statutory Website Special Education Needs Report
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UPDATE JANUARY 2016
Statutory Website Requirements Charging and Remissions Policies
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Statutory Website Requirements Values and Ethos
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Statutory Website Requirements Request for Copies
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Statutory Website
UPDATE JANUARY 2016
Governor’s Details & Register of Interests
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Statutory Website
UPDATE JANUARY 2016
The following is currently only a SHOULD requirement but we would strongly recommend including it
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Statutory Website Requirements Academy Specific Criteria
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What Next? You can start implementing all these recommendations and content additions straight away on your existing website. Should you be looking to update your website our experts will make sure your site is compliant before you go live.
But get stuck in and knock their socks off. Making your website something of beauty that has up to date, relevant content will go an enormously long way to keeping users interested and will present a great and accurate picture of your school to any Inspectors. We’ll keep you up to date with changes as and when they appear, as quickly as we can. Good luck!
Ian Richardson Director & Co-Founder
T: 0333 577 0753 | E:
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