Schools often ask us if there is a prescribed set of information which has to be provided in order to be compliant with government legislation. This legislation was established in September 2012 and continues to evolve as regulatory demands change. Occasionally, local authorities will make recommendations for additional content to be shown on your school website. This is further compounded by the demands of schools within a diocesan setting. Please refer to your local setting for this guidance.

To help you, we have provided a bullet point list of the key requirements as of January 2018 As more changes arise and are brought to our attention we will update this page accordingly. Note, for technical accuracy, some of the content below is taken directly from the GOV.UK website for which we provide a link at the bottom of this page. We also outline how we help to show this information on your website.

Introduction (please read!)

We have spoken to a small number of lead OFSTED inspectors about our approach to the delivery of key and statutory information within the website. Note that Ofsted itself does not stipulate what you must publish on your website; they simply check that your school complies with the statutory expectations and that the data provided on the site is appropriate to provide a clear reflection of the school.

The feedback we have gained leads us to recommend that, where possible, all information related to the regulatory matters are shown within one page. In order to help the school and the website visitor to fully deliver all of the information, we usually provide the bullet points from the government requirements, with supportive text, in the main body of the page, a little like you will see below. We then use sidebar content to provide the evidence to substantiate the bullet points. For example, where reference is made to OFSTED, within the sidebar we provide web links to OFSTED Parent View and also the OFSTED reports website. Likewise, where reference is made to policies or school statements and reports, we provide downloadable documents in the sidebar of the page.

The only exception to this, and this is only because of the sheer amount of detail involved, is that information related to the governing body is offered on a separate page. Our conversations with the lead inspectors tell is that this is a good approach and not only shows that the school is well organised but also assists the governing body and inspectors together to provide the most up-to-date and focused information about the School.

Hardcopy delivery

• It is a wise idea to include a statement at the top of the page to advise visitors that any information described on the page can be available as hardcopy upon request from the school.

School contact details

• you must provide the name of your school, its postal address and the school's telephone number, together with the name of the member of staff who deals with queries from parents and other members of the community, not forgetting your SENDCo name and contact information.

Tapiochre provide this information directly on the page, showing the name, address and telephone contact details of the headteacher at the school and, if requested primary contacts for SENCo, the bursar and other appropriate members of staff.

Admission arrangements

• The school should publish their admission arrangements which explain how applications are considered for each age group across the school. If for example you have arrangements for selecting pupils, then this must be described. If you have criteria for managing oversubscription, then this must also be described. There is also a requirement to explain the process which parents should follow if they wish to apply for their child to attend your school.
• Alternatively, if you follow a local authority process, you should publish details in the form of textual description or a web link which will direct parents to the appropriate page about the local authority's process.

The majority of schools use their local authority for the purposes of admissions management. When this is the case, Tapiochre provide a web link to the local authority admissions website within the sidebar of the page. Where schools need to provide their own admissions arrangements, either separate from the local authority or, as a supplement to the local authority's guidelines, then we also provide downloadable documents which support the admissions policy and process. These are also visible in the sidebar of the page.

OFSTED

• If you wish to publish a copy of your school's most recent OFSTED report then you should do so on your website
• Alternatively you should provide a working web link which will direct visitors straight to the OFSTED website where your reports are presented
• Although it is not stated as a mandatory requirement, it is seen as helpful information to provide web links to the OFSTED Parent View and OFSTED Data Dashboard websites for your school

Tapiochre provide web links to all of the key OFSTED sites, displayed clearly on the sidebar of the page.

Performance data

• A primary school should provide the following information
  • Information showing the percentage of pupils who achieved certain levels in reading, writing and mathematics.
  • You must also present details concerning the percentage of pupils showing an improvement by two or more levels in the same subjects between key stage one and key stage two.
  • Also show data relating to the percentage of pupils who achieved level 5 or above in reading, writing and mathematics
• A secondary school (Key Stage 4) should provide the following information
  • percentage of pupils who achieved a C or above in GCSEs (or equivalent) in 5 or more subjects, including English and maths
  • percentage of pupils who achieved the English Baccalaureate
  • percentage of pupils who have achieved at least the minimum expected levels of progress in English and maths between KS2 and KS4

Performance Tables

• All schools need to provide a link to the DfE school website, specifically to their own school page.

Each school chooses its own means how to display the most recent performance data relating to testing and assessment within schools. Tapiochre support this by including any textual information which the school offers so that it is displayed on the page under this heading. In addition, downloadable files which may contain significant detail about performance, in addition are website link to the Department of Education Performance Tables is usually also provided in the sidebar.

The Curriculum

• You must publish the following information about your school’s curriculum:
  • The content of the curriculum which your school follows in each academic year, for every subject
  • With a relationship to pupils at key stage 4, a list of the courses available, including GCSEs, should be shown
  • Information should be shown how parents or other members of the public can find out more about the curriculum which your school is following. Some schools use blogs to show what the year has been studying as a good evidence base, with downloadable files relating to each term’s curriculum as an example.
  • The names of any phonics or reading schemes in use in KS1

An appropriate method for displaying this information is to use downloadable documents in the sidebar of this page. For example, if schools use curriculum map files, with one file being used for each year group, then these maps can be shown as downloadable documents in the sidebar of this page. This is becoming a common approach and allows visitors to understand clearly a holistic approach to support for the curriculum.

Information which is related to reading and phonic schemes within key stage one is often found within the body of the page as clear text.

Policies and Documentation

• Although you may wish to do so in a different format, our experience is that provision of downloadable documents for the key policies and other reports is satisfactory for the purposes of the regulatory requirement and OFSTED. As such, the following are the policies and other documents which are required to be shown within your website:

Behaviour policy

• Some schools may call this the Discipline policy and they also include the Anti-bullying policy in this category.

Charging and Remissions policy

• Provide a copy of this policy

Equality Policy

• Provide a copy of this policy

Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) information

• This includes your school policy addressing SEND which may include the SEND Local Offer or this Local Offer information may be provided by a separate document. Some schools follow the Local Offer devised by their local authority. If this is the case then a web link to the local authority webpage for the Local offer should be provided.

PE and Sport Premium for Primary Schools

• If your school receives PE and Sport Premium Funding, then you must publish details of how your school spends this funding and the effect that it has on pupils as far as PE and sport participation and attainment is involved. Essentially, this document will describe the amount of funding you allocated in a school year and will show how it was spent and the impact it had in terms of improvement for the children for whom they funding is allocated.

Pupil Premium & Year 7 Literacy and Numeracy Catchup Funding

• Schools must publish details of how the school spends its pupil premium funding and the impact which it has had on the attainment of the pupils who attract the funding.
• If your school receives year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium funding, you must publish details of how your school spends this funding and the effect this has had on the attainment of the pupils who attract it.

Childcare information

• If your school runs childcare provision, for example a Nursery, a Holiday Club, a before or after school provision, then information should be provided to describe what the provision is, how it is run and managed.

Any policies, reports, statements and other associated documentation, often extending beyond the boundaries set by these top level regulator requirements, are generally frown on the sidebar of the page. Examples of documentation which is found here include; Safeguarding policy, British Values statements, Inclusion information, Radicalisation policy and other key documents which the school feels is relevant and necessary to provide.

Governance

• Schools must provide information about the Governing Body. For each member of the governing body, the following information should be provided:
  • Governor’s name
  • The category of Governor to which they belong
  • Which body appointed the Governor
  • The term of office of the Governor
  • The committee(s) upon which the Governor serves
  • Details of any position of responsibility which the Governor holds, for example Chair, Vice Chair, Chair of committee and so on.
  • This same information is required for any associate member of the Governing Body and should also show their voting rights.
  • A detail register of Governors’ interests.These can extend from financial interests in the school out to relationships that the governor has with members of the school itself or other schools.
  • A register of attendance must be provided showing the meetings which are being held and the attendance percentage (or other information) for each governor related to each appropriate meeting.

The detail and extent of information required in this section has increased significantly since it was initially mandated. In addition, it has become necessary to show the information in plain text on the page rather than as a downloadable series of information files about the governing body, its functions and associated data. This has resulted in Tapiochre taking the approach to dedicate a page to the governing body. The information needed is tabulated so that all aspects of the governing body is provided to clearly in one place. A link to the governing body page is provided within this section to allow the visitor to quickly reach that information.

Values and Ethos

• Your school should provide statement which describes the ethos of your school and values to which it adheres.

Tapiochre normally extract the statements required from the school prospectus and include them in the body of the page here in plain text.

Summary

These are the top level regulatory requirements. Schools should note that simply having this information available on the website does not release them from their duty to provide hardcopies the same information, at no charge, to parents who so request it.

For the most recent information on the GOV.UK website, please follow this link.