The list of information schools must publish online has not changed since 24 October 2024. That is the date both Department for Education pages were last updated, and they still sit at that date today. Yet when we audited 247 school websites across 24 compliance areas during 2025, only 6.5% were fully compliant. Sixteen schools out of 247.

Those two facts explain each other. School website compliance is not hard because the rules keep moving. It is hard because the statutory requirements stand still and schools do not. Governance changes in November. A policy is reviewed in March. A new SENCO starts in September. Nobody publishes anything wrong, and six months later the site no longer matches the school.

That is a maintenance problem, not a publishing problem, and maintenance problems are not solved by one big effort every September. They are solved by a routine. So this article sets out an Always Ready approach in practice: the rhythm, who owns what, and a school website compliance checklist organised by when things need checking rather than one long list you work through each autumn and then forget.

The short answer: what Always Ready means

Always Ready means your website is accurate on an ordinary Tuesday, because keeping it accurate is somebody’s job in an ordinary week. In the schools that manage it, four things are true.

1. A named owner for every published area. Not “the office”, not “the website person”. A person.
2. A rhythm. Some items need checking weekly, some termly, some annually, some only when something changes. Treating them all the same is why this work feels heavy.
3. Triggers. When a governor resigns, updating the website is a step in that process, not a task remembered later.
4. A verification pass. A regular check that what you believe is published really is published, and current.

None of that requires panic, which is the point. Schools working this way do not need a warning, because nothing is waiting to be caught up on.

Why a once-a-year school website compliance checklist fails

Most schools have a compliance checklist somewhere. The problem is not the list. A list is a snapshot, and a school website is a film.

Compliance drifts, it does not break

Very few schools fail because they never published something. They fail because what they published quietly went out of date. The strategy statement is there, but it is last year’s. The governance details still include a governor who left in the spring. Our average score across those 247 audits was 80.2%, median 85%. Most schools are close, very few are finished, and that gap is drift.

Nobody owns the gap between published and current

This catches good schools. Everybody agrees the website matters and assumes somebody else is checking. The office assumes the head reviews policies; the head assumes the office updates the site. Both are right about their own part, and the gap between them belongs to nobody.

September is the worst possible time to do it

The annual scramble lands in the first weeks of the autumn term, when schools have the least capacity they will have all year. You are settling new pupils, inducting school staff and running an admissions cycle. A full website review in that fortnight gets done quickly rather than well.

What Ofsted requirements actually say about your website

This is the part that should change how you think about timing.

Inspectors read the website before they ring you

Ofsted’s operating guide for inspectors, in use since 10 November 2025, covers preparing for inspection. It says:

“You may wish to review some information briefly before your first phone call with leaders to notify the inspection and return to this later in the day in order to review the information in more detail before the planning call.”

For a full inspection the lead inspector usually telephones between 9.30am and 10am on the Monday. If it is unannounced, the call comes about fifteen minutes before they arrive. The notice period is not a window for tidying your website. By the time you know, the reading has started.

What inspectors are told to check

The same guide lists what an inspector reviews. Alongside the previous report, the data summary report and any complaints, it names:

“the school and/or federation/trust website(s), specifically checking: the governance arrangements for the school (including establishing whether the school is part of a federation); for an academy, the trust’s scheme of delegation; governance information, including whether an interim executive board (IEB) is in place”

A second list adds “any further relevant information on the school’s website”.

Why that matters more than it looks

Notice what is named first and named specifically: governance. Set that beside our audit data, where governance information is the most failed area of all 24 we scored, missed by 49.8% of schools.

The one area inspectors are explicitly directed to your website to establish is the area schools are most likely to have wrong. It is the first impression an inspector forms of how well run your school is, and it forms before anyone has spoken to you. Maintained schools and academy trusts are in the same position. Publishing your governance details was a statutory requirement long before this guidance existed, so the guide creates no new duty. It tells you where a stranger looks first.

What the audit data tells us about school website compliance

We publish the full picture annually in The State of School Website Compliance in 2026. For building a routine, one pattern matters most.

The most missed areas were governance information (49.8%), PE and sport premium (46.1%), remote education (42.1%), the public sector equality duty (38.9%), pay gap reporting (37.3%), SEND (35.3%), admissions (34.2%), test, exam and assessment results (34.1%), trust requirements (32.7%) and curriculum (31.8%).

Read that as a set. Almost every item has to be refreshed on a cycle: a strategy published each year, a spend statement updated annually, objectives reviewed periodically, results updated each autumn. The areas schools get right are the ones that rarely change, for primary schools and secondary schools alike. Ofsted reports were missed by only 1.9%, ethos and values 6.3%, contact details and safeguarding both 11.7%. Compliance failure tracks how often an item needs revisiting, which is where to aim a routine.

What maintained schools must publish

These are the statutory requirements, from the DfE guidance on what maintained schools must or should publish online. A “must” is statutory. A “should” is strongly expected, and in practice treated as though it were required anyway. Community, voluntary controlled, voluntary aided, foundation and special schools share one list, whatever the school type.

Admission arrangements

Schools must publish details of their admission arrangements, including how to apply and how admission appeals work. Foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority and publish the full arrangements, including oversubscription criteria and the appeal arrangements. For community and voluntary controlled schools the local authority is the admission authority, so the burden is lighter, but you still need admissions information, key dates and a clear route to the local authority process.

Admissions is also where compliance and marketing meet. Parents read these pages long before they apply, so a page that is technically compliant but hard to follow quietly costs you applications.

Curriculum, careers and remote education

Schools must publish details of the curriculum for each academic year, by subject, with extra detail at key stage 1 and key stage 2 (phonics and reading schemes), key stage 3, and key stage 4 (courses, and what pupils study for GCSE English and maths). Where you teach a music curriculum, publish a music development plan summary. Secondary schools and sixth forms must publish careers programme information, covering careers guidance and technical education, including how providers make contact.

Remote education detail is a should, and 42.1% of schools miss it: a page written when it mattered urgently and not looked at since. If your remote education detail still describes arrangements from a national lockdown, that is exactly the drift this article is about, and it takes ten minutes to put right.

Governance information and financial information

Treat governance as your highest-risk area. Schools publish the structure and remit of the governing body and its committees, the full names of governors and their governance roles, the register of business and pecuniary interests for governors and school staff (including material interests of spouses and close relatives), and governor attendance.

On financial information, publish details of employees whose gross annual salary and benefits exceeded £100,000, in £10,000 increments, and link to your schools financial benchmarking page. Few maintained schools have anyone in that bracket, so a line stating none, if any, is a complete answer.

Pupil premium, PE and sport premium

Schools must publish a pupil premium strategy statement for the current academic year. Primary schools must also publish how they spend the PE and sport premium and its impact on pupils, including how many pupils met the expected standard in swimming and water safety. This is our second most failed area at 46.1%, almost always because of the date, and it affects primary schools every year.

Public sector equality duty and pay gap reporting

Under the Equality Act 2010 schools must publish information showing how they comply with the public sector equality duty, and a policy statement setting out specific, measurable equality objectives for pupils, reviewed rather than left in place. Publish information on progress against them too. Schools with 250 or more employees must also publish gender pay gap information.

SEND, behaviour policy and complaints

Schools publish their special educational needs information report, updated annually, and an accessibility plan setting out the steps that prevent disabled pupils being treated less favourably and improve access for disabled pupils over time. The report has to describe what you actually provide now, not what you provided when it was written, and mainstream schools must also name the SENCO.

Your written behaviour policy must be published, as must your school complaints procedure, showing how you go about handling complaints, and your charging and remissions policies. Schools usually get these right, because they sit on a review cycle the school already runs. The risk is version control: the policy has been reviewed, the new version sits in a folder, and the website still serves the old one.

Contact details and the rest

Be exact here, because this area is routinely overstated. The maintained requirement is your postal address, your telephone number, and the name of the member of staff who deals with queries from parents and carers and the public. Mainstream schools add the SENCO. The headteacher’s name is not part of the maintained must; it sits on the academies guidance as a should, and is worth publishing anyway.

Beyond that: schools must publish their latest Ofsted report or a link to it, and Ofsted reports are the one area almost nobody misses. Test, exam and assessment results and the relevant school measures must be published too, with a link to your school performance tables page, and performance tables links are easy to leave broken. Opening hours, ethos and values and your uniform policy should all be published, and schools with a designated religious character publish a section 48 report.

What academy trusts must publish

Academies and free schools follow a list mirroring the maintained schools one, with some items shifting between must and should, plus trust-level duties from the Academy Trust Handbook. The DfE guidance on what academies and further education colleges must or should publish online is the starting point. Academy trusts must publish at trust level as well as school level:

• Governance arrangements, readily accessible: structure and remit of members, trustees and committees, names of the chair, trustees and accounting officer, committee membership, and the register of interests. Handbook 1.55.
• Executive pay: employees whose benefits exceeded £100,000 for the year ended 31 August, in £10,000 bandings, published separately. Off-payroll arrangements above £100,000 count as though the person were an employee. Handbook 2.35.
• A whistleblowing procedure, published on the trust website. Handbook 2.48.
• Governance changes notified to DfE within 14 calendar days, with the website and Companies House updated. Handbook 2.54.
• A Notice to Improve, if issued, published within 14 days and kept up until lifted. Handbook 6.21.
• Annual report and audited accounts.

One duty is genuinely new. Under the Academy Trust Handbook 2026, effective 1 October 2026, a multi-academy trust must publish a website summary statement by 31 January, with the annual accounts, outlining how funds are distributed across its schools. Handbook 5.32. The first is due 31 January 2027, so plan the page now. Nothing else in the handbook’s website duties changed.

Trusts carry a problem single schools do not: the same duty repeated across every school site plus the trust site, with different people maintaining each. Consistency is the challenge, which is why we built the Schudio MAT Portal, so a central team sees every school at once rather than visiting twenty websites.

What changed for September 2026, and what did not

School uniforms: the policy changed, the website duty did not

From 1 September 2026 schools are limited to three different branded uniform items, or four for secondary and middle schools where one is a tie. This comes from section 35 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, inserting section 551ZA into the Education Act 1996, commenced by SI 2026/803. Uniform includes a bag, and clothing required for a club, lesson or activity the school facilitates. The guidance on uniform costs was updated on 6 July 2026.

Publishing the uniform policy remains a should. What changed is what the policy has to say, so this is not a new website requirement, but every uniform policy needs revising and your site should carry the revised one.

Allergy safety: a strong should, not a must

DfE published statutory guidance on allergy safety in schools on 6 July 2026, saying the policy should be published on the school website. You will see this reported as a duty starting in September 2026. It is not.

The publishing duty sits in section 34 of the same Act, and section 34 has not been commenced. Neither DfE publishing page mentions allergies. The September 2026 date attached to it is a confusion with the uniform commencement, which genuinely does start then.

So publish your allergy safety policy, because the guidance says you should and parents of children with allergies will look for it. But do not accept that you are breaking the law if you have not. A duty written into an Act is not a duty until a commencement regulation brings it into force, and that is the commonest way confident people get this wrong.

Building the routine: an Always Ready rhythm

Every week, five minutes

Not a compliance task, a health check. Is there news for parents? Are term dates current? Most drift is caught by somebody looking.

Every half term, thirty minutes

Check what moves with school life. Staff and SENCO details. Governor names and committee membership. Any policy reviewed since the last check.

Every term, an hour

Work through one third of your full compliance checklist, so across the year you cover everything twice rather than once badly. Autumn takes results, performance measures and pupil premium. Spring takes governance, finance and the equality duty. Summer takes curriculum, SEND, admissions and uniform. This is the highest-value change most schools can make: the work is identical, but it stops being a cliff.

Every year, on a fixed date

• The pupil premium strategy statement for the new academic year.
• PE and sport premium spend and impact for the year just finished.
• SEN information report review.
• Test, exam and assessment results when new data is published.
• Admission arrangements for the next entry year, with key dates.
• For trusts: annual report and accounts, executive pay bandings, and from January 2027 the funds distribution statement.

When something changes, not later

The most effective control we see is not a checklist at all. It is updating the website inside another process.

• A governor is appointed or resigns: the website is part of the clerk’s process, and for trusts a 14 day duty.
• A policy is ratified: publishing it is part of ratification, not a follow-up.
• A member of staff changes role: the website is on the starters and leavers checklist.
• Term dates are agreed: they go on the site the same day.

Build the update into the event and most of your annual compliance work stops existing.

Who owns what

A routine with no owner is a wish. The point is less the exact split than that every line has a name against it.

Area	Usual owner	Rhythm
Governance, register of interests, attendance	Clerk to governors	On change, plus termly
Policies, including behaviour and complaints	Owner of the policy schedule	On ratification
Curriculum and subject pages	Curriculum lead or deputy	Annually, plus on change
SEND, SEN information report, accessibility plan	SENCO	Annually
Premium funding statements and finance	Business manager	Annually, fixed dates
Admissions information and key dates	Office or business manager	Annually, plus admissions cycle
Results and performance measures	Head or data lead	Annually, when data lands
Contact details, staff, term dates, news	Office	Weekly and on change
Trust-level publishing	Trust governance professional	Per handbook deadlines

One more role matters: somebody holds the whole picture. In single schools that is usually the business manager or a deputy. In a trust it has to be central, because nobody at school level can see whether the other nineteen schools are current.

Your school website compliance checklist

The practical compliance checklist, organised by rhythm rather than statute, because that is how schools get the work done. It draws on the DfE guidance, the Academy Trust Handbook and the 26 areas we score when we audit schools.

Checklist one: the always-current items

• Postal address and telephone number correct.
• The named member of staff who deals with queries still works here.
• SENCO name and contact details correct.
• Term dates for the current and next academic year.
• Opening hours, total time in a typical week.
• Latest Ofsted report, or a working link. Section 48 report too, if you have one.
• Safeguarding policy current and easy to find.
• Complaints policy and procedure published.
• Behaviour policy, current version.
• Every document opens, and opens on a phone.

Checklist two: the termly rotation

• Governance: structure and remit, full names, who sits on what, register of interests, attendance. Your highest risk, and the first thing an inspector checks.
• Financial information: benefits over £100,000 in £10,000 increments, or a statement of none, if any, plus your benchmarking link.
• Public sector equality duty: equality information and measurable objectives. Gender pay gap information at 250 or more employees.
• Curriculum: content by subject and academic year, phonics and reading schemes, key stage 4 courses, careers programme.
• Remote education detail, checked that it describes what you would do now.
• SEND: the information report and accessibility plan for disabled pupils.
• Admission arrangements: arrangements, oversubscription criteria, how to apply, key dates, appeals.
• Uniform policy, compliant with the branded items limit from 1 September 2026.
• Allergy safety policy, per the July 2026 guidance.
• Accessibility statement for the website itself, a different duty from the accessibility plan.
• Ethos and values, recognisably yours.

Checklist three: the annual and trigger items

• Strategy statement for the current academic year.
• Sport funding impact on pupils, primary schools, including swimming.
• Results and performance measures, updated when new data is published.
• Charging and remissions policies reviewed.
• Music development plan summary, where applicable.
• Trusts: annual report and accounts, executive pay bandings, whistleblowing procedure, and from 31 January 2027 the funds distribution statement.
• Trigger: governance changes published, and for trusts notified to DfE within 14 days.
• Trigger: a Notice to Improve published within 14 days if issued.

To hand this round a leadership meeting, our School Website Requirements Guide sets out every area in full, with the current State of School Website Compliance report.

Common mistakes to avoid

Publishing a document instead of the information

A PDF is a container, not an answer. If the required detail is on page four of a 30 page policy, parents will not find it and an inspector has to hunt.

Trusting the document title

A file called “Strategy Statement” tells a reader nothing about which year it covers. Put the academic year in the visible link text, not just inside the file. And publishing the new version is only half the job: two versions on one page is worse than one out of date, because nobody knows which applies.

Assuming a policy review updated the website

It almost never does. The review happens, the minutes record it, and the site keeps serving the old file. Make publishing a step in ratification, so the policy and the published version move together.

Repeating the same gap across a trust

If one school in your trust is missing its equality objectives, check the others before you fix it. Gaps in trusts are rarely isolated, because the school websites were usually built and populated the same way at the same time.

Burying required information three clicks down

The test is that information is easily accessible. Parents should not have to guess whether governance sits under About Us, Key Information or Our School.

Treating the accessibility plan and the accessibility statement as one thing

Separate duties. The plan is about access for disabled pupils to your school and curriculum. The statement is about your website, under the public sector accessibility regulations. Schools are partially exempt, but a partially exempt organisation still publishes a statement.

Believing the requirements changed because it is September

They mostly do not. Both DfE lists have stood at 24 October 2024 for nearly two years. Acting on a rumour wastes time you could spend on the drift that is genuinely costing you marks. When something real does change, like the uniform commencement, it arrives with a date and a statutory instrument behind it.

Waiting for a warning

The most expensive one. If your plan is to sort the website when you think you are due an inspection, remember the reading starts around the notification call. Ready beats warned.

How we help schools stay ready

To know where you stand, a school website audit scores you across all 26 areas and says what is missing and where.

If the real problem is that your site makes updating hard, that is a website problem rather than a compliance problem. Our school website software is built so office staff can keep pages current without needing help, which is what makes a weekly rhythm realistic. For trusts, the MAT Portal gives a central team the position across every school, and our trust team can walk you through it.

We run a free live workshop on the school website requirements monthly, and a multi-academy trust compliance workshop for trust-level duties. On inspection readiness, see Ofsted ready rather than Ofsted panicked, and for the mechanics of checking a site, how to complete a school website compliance audit step by step.

Frequently asked questions

How often should we check our school website for compliance?

Split it rather than doing everything at once. Five minutes weekly, thirty minutes each half term, and a third of the full checklist each term. Everything is covered twice a year, and it takes less total time than the annual scramble it replaces.

Have the school website requirements changed for 2026?

The DfE publishing lists have not. Both were last updated on 24 October 2024. Two things at the edges did change: the uniform branded items limit came into force on 1 September 2026, which alters what your policy says rather than whether you publish it, and the Academy Trust Handbook 2026 added a duty for multi-academy trusts on how funds are distributed across schools, first due 31 January 2027.

Do we have to publish an allergy safety policy?

The statutory guidance of 6 July 2026 says you should, and we would. The duty to publish it, in section 34 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, has not been commenced, so it is not a must and there is no September 2026 deadline.

Does Ofsted check your school website, and how much notice do we get?

Yes, and less notice than you would need. Ofsted’s operating guide for inspectors, in use since 10 November 2025, directs inspectors to review the school or trust website when preparing, specifically checking governance arrangements, the scheme of delegation for an academy, and whether an interim executive board is in place. It also says an inspector may review information before the call notifying the inspection. For a full inspection that call usually comes between 9.30am and 10am on the Monday of the inspection week, and unannounced inspections bring a call about fifteen minutes before arrival.

Is a PDF acceptable for published information?

It is not prohibited, but it is usually the weaker choice. The test is whether information is easily accessible, and a page is easier for parents to read on a phone, easier for assistive technology, easier to update and easier for an inspector to verify at a glance. Keep documents for things that genuinely are documents, like a signed policy or a set of accounts.

Who should own school website compliance?

Individual areas should sit with whoever owns the underlying work: the clerk holds governance, the SENCO holds the SEN information report, the business manager holds the funding statements. One person then holds the overall picture, usually the business manager or a deputy. In a trust that oversight has to be central, because no single school can see whether the others are current.

What is the most commonly missed requirement?

Governance, by a distance. It was missed by 49.8% of the 247 schools we audited, and it is the first thing an inspector is told to check on your website. If you fix one area this term, fix that one.

Where to start this week

If this feels like a lot, that is because it is all presented at once. Doing it is lighter than reading about it. Three steps.

1. Check governance today. Names, committees, register of interests, attendance. Highest risk, and the first thing an inspector reads.
2. Put dates in the calendar, not tasks on a list. Premium funding statements in the autumn, admissions in the summer.
3. Give every area a name. Ten minutes allocating owners with your leadership team beats a day of checking.

Compliance stops being stressful at the point it stops being an event. That is the idea behind Always Ready: not more effort, just effort spread out, so that when somebody looks, whether parents on a Sunday evening or an inspector on a Monday morning, your website already says what it should.

If you want a hand working out where you stand, get in touch. We look at school websites all day and will tell you plainly what we see.