What must a school publish on its website?
Maintained schools in England must publish specific information online under the DfE guidance "What maintained schools must publish online". Academies and free schools publish similar information under their funding agreements and separate DfE guidance. Items include admissions, curriculum, policies, Ofsted reports, performance data, SEND information and funding statements.
This summary is not a substitute for the guidance itself, which changes from time to time. We build a statutory information section that mirrors the DfE headings, so governors and inspectors can check it quickly and staff can see which items are due for review.
- Contact details, school opening hours and the name of the person who handles parent enquiries.
- Admission arrangements, or where to find them if the local authority sets them.
- A link to the latest Ofsted report and to the school's performance tables page.
- Curriculum information for each subject and year group.
- Behaviour policy, complaints procedure, and charging and remissions policy.
- SEND information report, accessibility plan and equality objectives.
- Pupil premium strategy statement and, for primary schools, PE and sport premium spending.
- Governance arrangements and the financial information the guidance specifies.
Do school websites have to be accessible?
Yes. Every school has duties under the Equality Act 2010, and state schools are public sector bodies. The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 partially exempt schools, but content for essential administrative functions is still covered. Building to WCAG 2.2 AA and publishing an accessibility statement is the sensible standard for every school.
Accessibility also helps parents who speak English as an additional language, use older phones or read on the school gate. Our UI/UX website design process includes accessibility testing from the first wireframe.
- Readable text, strong colour contrast and pages that work with a keyboard and screen readers.
- Policies published as accessible web pages, with PDFs only as secondary downloads.
- Alt text for images and captions or transcripts for video.
- Forms, such as absence reporting or event sign-ups, that can be completed without a mouse.
- An accessibility statement explaining any known issues and how to request another format.
How should a school website support parent communications?
A school website should be the reliable home for information parents need repeatedly: term dates, the calendar, letters, newsletters, menus, uniform, clubs and closure notices. It works alongside your messaging app or email system, which handle urgent, personal and payment communications, rather than trying to replace them.
A prominent emergency banner that a member of the office team can switch on from a phone is one of the most valuable features a school site can have.
| Information | Best home | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Term dates and calendar | Website | Stable, needed all year, often searched |
| Letters and newsletters | Website archive, plus email or app alert | Parents can find them again later |
| Emergency closures | Website banner, plus text or app message | Reaches parents fast and is visible to everyone |
| Individual pupil updates | Messaging app or MIS | Personal data should not be on public pages |
| Trip payments and dinner money | Payments platform | Secure, reconciled with school finance |
How do prospective families use school websites?
Prospective families use school websites to judge ethos, results and daily life before an open day. They look for the head's welcome, recent Ofsted outcomes, admissions dates, photos of real classrooms, clubs and wraparound care. A clear admissions journey, with key deadlines and open day booking, turns that interest into applications.
Be honest and specific: describe your curriculum, enrichment and pastoral support in plain English, and link to official data rather than selectively quoting it. Photos of pupils need appropriate consent under your safeguarding and data protection policies.
Local search matters too. Parents search for schools by area, so a complete Google profile, accurate address and opening hours, and fast mobile pages help families find you. Our SEO services explain how that works.
Which content management system suits a school?
A school needs a content management system that non-technical staff can use confidently, with roles and permissions, scheduled publishing, a document library and easy news and calendar updates. WordPress and other mainstream platforms work well when set up carefully. Avoid systems that lock content in or make leaving expensive.
Multi-academy trusts often need a shared platform with a trust site and individual school sites that share branding and policies but keep their own news and calendars. Our CMS website development service covers this kind of structure, and our guide to the best CMS for small organisations compares common options.
Plan for continuity: staff change, so editing guides, sensible permissions and support through website maintenance keep the site current long after launch.
What mistakes do school websites make?
Common school website mistakes include out-of-date statutory information, policies uploaded only as scanned PDFs, broken links to Ofsted and performance tables, last year's term dates, and menus so deep that parents cannot find letters. Cookie banners and tracking that ignore PECR consent rules are also frequent problems.
- No owner for each statutory item, so reviews slip.
- Huge photo galleries slowing the home page on mobile data.
- Third-party widgets that set cookies before consent.
- Pupil names alongside photos without a clear consent basis.
- Old staff accounts left active after people leave.