Managing your school website – how do you do it?

Nigel Milligan, IT manager to school and businesses, shares his advice for managing your school website   

Each year the expectation for schools’ website from the DfE and Ofsted increase and there is a larger demand for schools to invest time and money into ensuring the websites are compliant and engaging. There are many options available for schools to create their own site or buy the services of one of the many specialist companies which will do the majority of the hard work for you.

Which option do you choose? I’d like to discuss the various choices that schools currently use along with the pros and cons of each.

Self-built and hosting is a common choice for schools who have staff with the technical knowledge to set up and host the website themselves. The most popular platform is WordPress, which has a huge library of resources and plugins to enable rich and vibrant content. Other members of staff can have access to blogs and relevant content that they can manage for themselves and pupil areas and blogs are possible within WordPress too. Another option, one of which I use for some schools is Squarespace, which is a very affordable solution and works very well across all platforms.

The major issue that many schools have had with the self-hosted option is that it’s usually dependent on a key member of staff. If that staff member moves on, the whole site ends up out of date very quickly. This is when these schools will look at the professional options available from one of the many educational website providers. 

Professionally hosted education websites are more costly to set up but do offer a far more focussed and well-planned design, which is immediately compliant. Once these sites are live and in use, they can be regularly updated. This is where the staff are again having to be involved and trained in managing the website as whilst the company who hosts the service will offer update services, this pushes up the annual cost. As part of my role with the schools I look after, I also include the management and updates of the website which makes the overall annual cost more affordable so it’s worth asking your IT provider if they can take on this task for you. Teaching staff have a lot to do anyway without having to also manage and update your school website.

It’s worth planning your site so that much of the content, especially day to day activities and news is embedded into the relevant pages and sections of the website. One great example of this at one of our schools is the use of Twitter. Each class has their own Twitter feed, which is embedded on their own class pages and, whilst the main class pages are updated annually, the core content is always up to date. Ofsted have been impressed with this as it helped them see a better picture of the school before their visit.

The latest focus on website requirements ensures that your site clearly shows great examples of the quality of education in your school using evidence from pupil and parent voice as well as great curriculum website content. Make sure that you follow a very clear and well organised navigation system to make it easier to find key information.  Please ensure that you publish any of the ‘must’ and ‘should’ requirements as stated by the DfE.