Did you know Ofsted inspectors look for specific criteria when investigating your school website? You are expected to closely follow the guidelines provided by Ofsted when designing and updating your school website; view the full checklist below to check your compliance.

Your school website is just as important as your premises

Just like your classrooms, your web pages need to be tidy, clean, and not overcrowded. Lately, parents and guardians would have been more likely to regularly visit your school website rather than your school premises. Although it is a virtual space, your school website needs to have an accessible design as well as showcase all useful information for families.

How to enhance your standard content

We’d like to offer you some advice on how to go about designing and publishing the content required by Ofsted on your school website.

Don’t make it a treasure hunt

Be concise: parents and guardians need to be able to know exactly where to click when looking for contact details, policies, or opening hours. Having a clear menu with subpages is a great way to approach this; the more difficult it is for families to navigate your website, the less they’ll get used to using it, and they’ll go back to ringing your school office for information.

Distinguish long-form and short-form content

When designing a web page, you should aim to make it as tidy as possible, while still providing the right amount of information. When it comes to your homepage, keep in mind that people don’t want to be scrolling too long to reach the bottom. If you have more lengthy content to distribute, consider a newsletter or blog posts instead.

Always offer visual aids

Visual aids such as photographs and colourful touches can be great tools to enhance your Ofsted required content! Though Ofsted doesn’t list photographs in their checklist, they definitely add personality to your website and make it more of an interactive experience, but most of all, they perfectly reflect your values and ethos, a showcase of which is indeed required by Ofsted.

What else can you add to your website to make it unique and informative?

Apart from providing essential information for your school community, your school website is also the perfect place to get creative, publish what makes you proud, keep your parents and guardians engaged, and attract prospects.

Promo videos & virtual tours

The best way to attract prospective parents and students is to offer them a chance to experience your school’s essence virtually in a few seconds. Include clips of your strongest characteristics: facilities, equipment, extracurricular activities, parental engagement tools… Did you know we offer promo videos and 3D virtual tours?

Term Calendar

Optimise attendance rates for your school events by advertising them on a term calendar on your school website. Whether it’s your upcoming parents’ evening, or Christmas dinner, parents and guardians should get into a habit of regularly checking your calendar for upcoming announcements.

Blog or newsletter

As mentioned above, long-form content should absolutely be published as a blog post or a regular newsletter for parents and guardians to catch up on the latest news and announcements. Provide lots of fun pictures of your students (only with parental consent) and your daily school life.

School meal information

As well as FSM and UFSM information, it would be a good idea to provide a weekly, biweekly, or monthly menu to keep parents and guardians informed on their children’s school meals. Add a link to your payments tool to let families book and pay for meals in advance.

Your next Ofsted rating: Outstanding!

At Parentapps, we guarantee you that our websites are always 100% Ofsted compliant. Curious to learn about what solution is the best fit for you? Contact our website design team for a consultation and we can get you started before your next Ofsted inspection.