It is an interesting fact of life that some schools do virtually no advertising while others spend considerable sums – and yet both get the same level of applicants.
It is also interesting that in some schools the school office is terribly overloaded with phone calls and email enquiries from parents and prospective parents while in others it is not.
And what is most interesting is that these two findings are not related to a school’s size, Ofsted report, or level of exam results. It is down to something quite different.
That something is, rather curiously, the state of the school’s website.
Three years on from the School Information Regulations it seems that around 40% of school websites don’t contain all the information they should. Which not only means that the school is in breach of the regulations (obviously) but also that parents are calling the school or waiting to speak to someone in the office in search of information which could easily be displayed on the school’s website. For example, how many of your parents say ‘my child has lost their permission slip?’ Placing a generic form on the school’s website for them to complete and return would help.
Nearly 90% of the school websites reviewed by Raise Education do not provide information which is commonly sought by parents, while 98% of them rather embarrassingly contain spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors – not really the best advertisement for the school.
Even more frustrating, 76% of school websites contain at least one link that does not work, while 73% contain information that is seriously out-of-date (such as a staff contact list for a previous year).
But what is perhaps most interesting is the fact that in 95% of cases where schools have a serious error on their website, the person who is in charge of the website asserted that everything was ok.
Which, by and large, is why Raise Education developed the Web Review Challenge. For we realised that where the person who updates the website is also the person who checks the website, then problems are likely to continue. As publishers of books and digital media will always say, “You can’t proofread your own work”.
So we’ve now created a service that checks every aspect of a school website, checking on statutory content, good practice, spelling, grammar, links, and the currency of the data. We then produce a detailed written report, not only specifying any errors or incompleteness we find, but also exactly noting exactly where they are and what the problem is.
Over 1000 schools have now used this service, and it has fast and firmly become embedded as the one review of the school website which means you can rest assured that your school website is fair on you. You can see what some have said about us by clicking on ‘testimonials.’
Click on ‘example report‘ to give you an idea of what the report will look like.
Click on ‘web report’ to find out further information for governors’ duties on ensuring key content is published.
If you’d like to have your website reviewed then reply with the words ‘Web Rev HH’ in the subject box and confirm your school’s website address. The fee is £235 for primary schools and £265 for secondary schools and colleges. However if all the statutory content is in place the cost is £117.50 for infant, junior and primary schools and £132.50 for secondary.
Our best wishes
Jazz from the Raise Education team
Contact details
Email: jazz@raiseeducation.co.uk
Website: www.raiseeducation.co.uk
Tel: 0843 362 4834