Ian Richardson
Built hundreds of website and helped countless schools realise their potential online. Ian should be called upon for straight-talking advice and to make a difference to the way you present your school through every outlet.
It can be difficult to know where to start when making sure your website is ready for the OFSTED Inspectors. We do everything we can to make that as easy as possible through a range of services but, if you have everything in place (or think you do) why not think about how your school website can be the very best it can be from the inspectors point of view?
If you take the time to really go through your site to make sure you have the statutory content covered and then go a bit further you can nail making sure you're ready.
Have you got the statutory content covered?
Make sure that everything that OFSTED requires is linked to or provided directly on your site. This is the very basic level of compliance but is mandatory for all schools. It changes at least 3-4 times a year so you must also keep up to date with that. We can help with that if you need us to.
What are the most important 'nice to haves'?
Through regular conversations with Inspectors, schools that have been visited recently and a number of other contacts we have a detailed list of 'nice-to-haves' on your website that, while not compulsory, OFSTED like to see on all school websites.
Our OFSTED Ready Website Services provide a full review for you to make sure you have the basics covered but will also check if you have any of the nice-to-haves in place. Below are some of the things you might like to consider that we know for a fact Inspectors like to see. All these come as standard with all our website packages.
- Twitter Feed - if you're using Twitter (and you should be) then make sure your website has a Twitter feed which includes all the latest news, events and conversations with your school community
- Headteacher's Welcome - get (or nag) the Head to write a nice welcome from him or herself to the school, outlining from a personal point of view the values and ethos of the school and a photo, which might be the difficult bit!
- Gallery of children's work - add regular updates to your website that includes work the student create. Using our CMS the students can blog directly on to the website and you can use specific elements within our system to offer detailed information to support the mandatory Curriculum content.
- Events Calendar - it comes as standard on our system but you really need a calendar of events that is easy to use and can be viewed on any device.
- Responsive Design - it is becoming something that is increasingly important, not least because over 50% of all school website visits are now from a tablet or mobile device as standard. Make sure your website looks good on all devices. (this is standard with all our packages).
How do we make sure that OFSTED can find the content they need to see without compromising other users?
This is a bit of a tricky one and something that is under discussion with a number of our clients at the moment. There is a discussion on Should I have a button called 'Information for Inspectors' which we do have an opinion on. However, which ever way you go on this, whether it is to provide easy access to the content via a button or through a well structured site, please do make sure you take the time to think carefully about your site structure to make sure the Inspectors can find what they want easily but also get a true feel for your school; it's values, ethos and the community around the school.
ULTIMATE GOAL
OFSTED is one of your key website audiences and they need to be able to find and engage with the content they need to see easily, on any device. Give them what they need in a format that is easy to find and easy to read, however they find and access your shiny, OFSTED Ready School Website.
