Free Compliance Checklist:

2024 Ofsted School Website Requirements

According to the Government website, every local-authority-maintained school must publish specific information on its website to comply with the latest regulations. Schools have a statutory duty to arrange for this specific information to be published online. It is often then Ofsted who will inspect your website and review how compliant your website is.

Since school website regulations came into play, we’ve been devising our free compliance checklist to ensure your school is up to date with the latest Ofsted school website requirements.

Stay tuned, here are all the Ofsted school website requirements you need to keep in check for this year…

Before We Start

As of this article date, we have provided the latest school website requirements. We will continue to keep this blog updated as much as we can, but please bear in mind there may also be additional school website requirements after the publication of this article.

Our Ofsted checklist has been created to keep schools informed of what they need to update on their websites. It is a go-to guide that allows you to run down the list and check off each section. If you are struggling to audit your own, then you can always ask one of our experts to carry out a website audit for you! Just give us a call on 01270 252 106.

Preparing Your Website

When it comes to a complaint school website, there are lots of things to consider. Your very first thing to do is make sure the website is well-organised and easy to navigate. Are all your policies and key bits of information clearly laid out for prospective parents and potential Ofsted inspectors?

Here are 3 key tips to prepare your website for Ofsted success…

#1 Provide Clear Information

One thing that needs to be essential on your website is clear information. When Ofsted inspectors check your website, the information needs to be clear and also demonstrated. If your school works regularly with the local community, demonstrate how you do it and add additional community links. Treat it as evidence, raise a point and back it up with a resource or link.

#2 The Important Stuff

Finding the important stuff is a vital aspect of Ofsted compliance. As much as you might know where your pupil premium policy is if it isn’t clear you can be sure that your users will give up looking for it and you can wave goodbye to that Outstanding award.

#3 Stay Up To Date

Another thing to remember now that inspectors have found your policies is to keep them updated. It’s no good having policies years out of date, set yourself a reminder to check your policies every 6 months to ensure nothing goes out of date.

It is also worth noting as we mentioned above that regulations change all the time, we would recommend checking back in with the Design Office team to see if there are any new updates relating to Ofsted school website requirements.

The Good Stuff!

Ofsted school website requirements change often, we will always try to keep the below checklist up to date as much as we can. If you need any additional assistance whilst reviewing our Ofsted checklist, please don’t hesitate to get in touch! You can call us on 01270 252 106.

School Contact Details

Your school website must include the following school contact details:

• Name of your school
• Postal address of your school
• Your school’s telephone number
• The name of the member of staff who manages any enquiries from parents and members of the public
• The name and contact details of your special educational needs coordinator

Admission Arrangements

If your Governing body decides your admissions arrangements then you must publish these online every year and keep them on there for a year. These policies must explain:

• How you will consider applications for each year’s group
• What parents need to if they want to apply for their child to attend your school
• Any arrangements for selecting pupils who apply (if you are a selective school)
• How do you offer places if there are more applicants than places

You must also publish an online timetable for admission appeals by the 28th of February every year, which includes:

• A deadline for lodging appeals
• Reasonable deadlines for those making an appeal such as the process and timescales of submitting evidence
• Ensuring at least 10 days’ notice for those making an appeal
• Ensuring decision letters are sent within 5 school days of the hearing where possible

Ofsted Reports

As per the Government website, you are required to publish a copy of your school’s most recent Ofsted report or a link to the report on the Ofsted website.

Exam Results

Until new performance measures are published, you must continue to display your 2018 to 2019 performance measures and mark that they are not current. The regulations are however different for each key stage:

Key Stage 2 – End Of Primary School
You must publish:

• Progress scores in reading, writing and maths
• Averaged ‘scale scores’ in reading and maths
• The percentage of pupils who achieved at least and higher standards in reading, writing and maths

Key Stage 4 – End Of High School
You must publish:

• Progress 8 score
• The percentage of pupils who achieved a grade 5 or above in English and maths
• Attainment 8 score
• An average point score, showing pupils’ point scores across the 5 pillars of the EBacc
• The Government website also recommends that you publish the percentage of EBac students staying in education or going into employment after Key Stage 4.

Key Stage 5 – End Of Sixth Form/College
You must publish the following performance measures:

• Progress
• Attainment
• Progress in English and maths
• Retention
• Destinations

Performance Tables

You must publish on your website a link to the school or college performance tables and also your school’s performance tables page.

Curriculum

Your curriculum is also an important school website requirement that requires you to publish:

• The contents of your school’s curriculum for each year group including the subjects
• The names of any key reading or phonics schemes you are using in Key Stage 1
• Any courses available to pupils at Key Stage 4, this includes GCSEs
• How prospective parents or the general public can find out more about the relevant curriculum you are following
• You must also consider how you are going to comply with the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014.

Remote Education

You must publish how your school incorporates the provision for remote education.

Behaviour Policy

You must publish your school’s behaviour policy in line with Section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006.

Pupil Premium
You must publish a strategy for your school’s use of the pupil premium. For the current academic year, you must include:

• The allocated pupil premium grant amount
• A summary of the main barriers to educational achievement faced by eligible pupils at the school
• How your school will spend the pupil premium to overcome any barriers and the reasons for your chosen approach
• How your school will measure the effect of the pupil premium
• The date of the next review of your school’s pupil premium strategy

For the previous academic year, you must include:

• How your school spend the pupil premium allocation
• The effect of the expenditure on pupils

Year 7 Literacy & Numeracy Catch-Up Premium

If at any point between 2019 to 2020 your school received year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium funding, you are required to publish:

• Information on how your school spent your allocation for that academic year
• How your school has used the allocation to make a difference to the pupils who benefit from the funding

PE & Sport Premium For Primary Schools

Often primary schools receive PE and sports premium, if this is applicable to your school, you must publish:

• The total amount of premium your school received
• A full breakdown of how it has been spent
• The impact your school has seen on pupils’ PE and sport participation
• How these improvements will be sustainable in the future

The Government website also details that you must publish the percentage of pupils within your year 6 who met the national curriculum requirement to:

• Swim confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
• Use a range of strokes effectively
• Perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

Equality Objectives

Local authority maintained schools must comply with the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act 2010 and the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017. You must therefore publish:

• Information of how your school complies with the public sector equality duty, which needs to be updated every year
• Your school’s equality objectives, which must be updated at least every 4 years

Special Educational Needs & Disability (SEND) Information

Your school must publish a report about your school’s policies related to SEN pupils and update this at least once a year. This report must comply with section 69 of the Children and Families Act 2014, and so forth needs to contain the following:

‘SEN Information’ specified in schedule 1 to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014
information as to:

• Key arrangements for the admission of disabled pupils
• Any steps your school have taken to prevent disabled pupils from being treated less favourably than other pupils
• The current facilities your school provides to help disabled pupils to access your school

The plan prepared under paragraph 3 of schedule 10 to the Equality Act 2010 (accessibility plan) for:

• Increasing the extent to which disabled pupils can participate in the school’s curriculum
• Improving the physical environment of the school for the purpose of increasing the extent to which disabled pupils are able to take advantage of education and benefits, facilities or services provided or offered by your school
• Improving the delivery to disabled pupils of information which is readily accessible to pupils who are not disabled

Careers Programme Information

For your current academic year, you must publish information about your school’s careers programme including:

• The name, email address and telephone number of the school’s careers leader
• An overall summary of your careers programme, including details of how pupils, parents, teachers and employers may access information about the careers programme
• How your school’s measures impact of the careers programme on pupils
• The date of your school’s next review of the information published

Complaints Procedure

It is important that you also publish the details of your school’s complaints procedure, which must comply with section 29 of the Education Act 2002. This includes publishing any arrangements for handling complaints from parents of children with SEND about the support the school provides.

Governors’ Information & Duties

You must also publish information relating to your Governing body, which must include:

Details of the structure and responsibilities of the governing body and any committees
The full names of the Chair of the Governing body and Chair of each committee
Information about each governor, including their:

• full name, date of appointment, term of office, date they stepped down and who appointed them

Any relevant business and financial interests including:

• Any Governance roles in other educational institutions
• Any material interests arising from relationships between governors or relationships between governors and school staff (including spouses, partners and/or close relatives)
• Their attendance record at Governing body and committee meetings over the last academic year

The above information should also be published for associate members making it clear whether they have voting rights on any of the committees to which they have been appointed.

Financial Information

Your school must publish:

• How many school employees (if any) have a gross annual salary of £100,000 or more in increments of £10,000
• A link to a webpage which is dedicated to your school’s financial benchmarking service

Charging & Remissions Policies

Your school website must publish your charging and remissions policies including details of:

• Any activities or cases where your school will charge pupils’ parents
• Any circumstances where your school will make an exception on a payment you would normally expect to receive under your charging policy

Values & Ethos

Another Ofsted school website requirement includes a statement of your school’s ethos and values.

• Requests For Paper Copies
• You must provide a paper copy of the information on your website free of charge if requested by a parent.

Desired School Website Requirements

We build bespoke school websites for schools, colleges and universities across the UK and understand exactly what we impress your inspectors. Alongside the whole list above, we’ve also created a list of desirable website requirements that can really “wow” inspectors and prospective parents:

• School calendar with updated events each month
• High resolutions photography and videography
• Responsive design (this comes with every website we build!)
• Social media links
• A location map including any relevant information about parking and directions
• Accessibility tools such as a translate button make sure your website is accessible to everyone
• A domain name that makes sense to users
• Term dates and relevant times of the school day, lessons and events
• Key information for parents such as the lunch menu and useful websites
• Easy navigation and clear design

Ofsted Compliant Websites!

As education specialists, we know what it takes to build a winning website for your school. From creative design to accessibility on various devices, we have what it takes to transform your school website and impress your Ofsted inspectors. Simply fill in our booking form below and book a consultation with our team and we will manage the rest!