The amount of published content that is required from schools to display on their website is getting more and more. Ensuring the information is accessible quickly and easily is crucial . With limited timespans, your visitors could end up leaving your site if they can’t find the information they need.

Organising your content to make it simple for users to find the information applicable to them is the first step. Take a look at our Blog below on what we would recommend.

Menu Titles

A recommendation would be to have the following titles at the top of your page. This would make it easier for the visitor – whether they are looking as a parent, Ofsted, a new starter or looking to find out information about your school, to find the information they need quickly and easily.

About Us
Parents
Pupils
Curriculum
Statutory

You may also have additional tabs for HOME to return users to the homepage or CONTACT so visitors can find your contact details quickly as they may just be looking for a telephone number or email address.

Next

Now, we need to structure our pages under each of these menu items. You may want to start with a pen and paper to organise this. I mentioned in the previous article, if you have a WordPress website, you can use your sitemap to identify which pages are currently within the site but if not, you should be able to find the pages from within your content management system.

About

Under the ABOUT section, you could include information such as:

  • Welcome from the Headteacher
  • Vision and Values
  • School Admissions
  • School Organisation
  • Our Staff
  • Vacancies
  • School Prospectus

Parents

This section should have all of the useful information for the parents to find. This may include:

  • Newsletters or Letters Home
  • Calendar of Events
  • School Uniform
  • School Lunches
  • The School Day
  • Term Dates
  • Online Safety
  • Useful Links
  • How we communicate with you

Pupils

If you encourage your pupils to visit your site, this may include information for them including:

  • Learning Links – to useful websites
  • Remote learning
  • E-Safety advice
  • Class Pages

Curriculum

Your school curriculum should be prominent on your school website and detailed to show the curriculum content for each subject in each year group. We will be providing information on what these statutory requirements are over the next few days so please look out for those as you may have some content missing from this section.

  • Curriculum Overview
  • Subject Areas
  • Long Term Plans
  • Short Term Plans

Statutory

This section is specifically set up for Ofsted but it is also useful for you as you know that all of your legal requirements are in the one section, making updating this information simple.

Here are a few ideas of what you should include in this section. Please remember that we will be publishing the Ofsted latest website requirements so this list is not exhaustive.

  • Policies
  • Pupil Premium
  • Sport & PE Premium
  • Covid Catch-up Premium
  • Safeguarding
  • SEND
  • Governor Information
  • Ofsted
  • School Performance
  • Accounting Information (if you are an academy)

Once you have all of your site map organised it will make adding future content easier as they will have a natural placement on your website rather than just ‘sticking’ it somewhere.