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.

Requests for Paper Copies

You must include a statement at the top of the page to advise visitors that any information described on the page can be available as hardcopy, at no charge, 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 (unless you’re a special school).

Tapiochre delivery 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.

It can also be shown on the school Contact Us page.

Admission arrangements

If your school’s governing body determines your admission arrangements, you must publish them on your website each year and keep them on your website for the whole school year.

You must explain:

• how you’ll consider applications for each relevant age group at your school
• what parents should do if they want to apply for their child to attend your school
• your arrangements for selecting the pupils who apply (if you are a selective school)
• your ‘over-subscription criteria’ (how you offer places if there are more applicants than places)

You must also publish a timetable for organising and hearing admission appeals for your school by the 28 February each year.

This must:

• include a deadline for lodging appeals which allows those making an appeal at least 20 school days from the date of notification that their application was unsuccessful to prepare and lodge their written appeal
• include reasonable deadlines for those making an appeal to submit additional evidence, for admission authorities to submit their evidence and for the clerk to send appeal papers to the panel and parties
• ensure that those making an appeal receive at least 10 school days’ notice of their appeal hearing
• ensure that decision letters are sent within 5 school days of the hearing wherever possible
• Alternatively, if the local authority manages your admissions process, you muct refer parents to the local authority via a tested weblink to find out about your school’s admission and appeal arrangements.

Commonly, we provide a web link to the local authority admissions website within the sidebar of the page. Where you need to provide your own admissions arrangements, either separate from the local authority or, as a supplement to the local authority's guidelines, then we also support downloadable documents which describe the admissions policy and process.

OFSTED

You must publish either a copy of your school’s most recent Ofsted report or a link to the report on the Ofsted website.

• 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 the Government School Comparison websites for your school

Tapiochre usually provide web links to all of the key OFSTED sites

Exam and assessment results

Schools are not required to publish their exam and assessment results from the 2019-2020 academic year as these were not published as performance measures by the Secretary of State. You must, however, continue to display your 2018-2019 performance measures until new performance measures are published. You should clearly mark that these performance measures are not current. You will find further information on school and FE accountability expectations for the 2019 to 2020 academic year.

Key stage 4 (end of secondary school) results

You must publish the following details from your school’s most recent key stage 4 performance measures as published by the Secretary of State (for most schools, the performance measures published for the 2018 to 2019 academic year):

• Progress 8 score
• attainment in English and maths - percentage of pupils achieving a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and maths
• Attainment 8 score
• English Baccalaureate (EBacc) average point score (APS) - in 2018, the EBacc attainment measure changed to an average point score, showing pupils’ point scores across the 5 pillars of the EBacc

We suggest that schools also publish percentage of pupils that enter the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) staying in education or going into employment after key stage 4 (pupil destinations).

Key stage 5 (16 to 18) information

If your school operates a sixth form, you must publish the following details from your school’s 16 to 18 performance tables page most recent key stage 5 (16 to 18) performance measures 16 to 18 accountability headline measures guidance as published by the Secretary of State (for most schools, the performance measures published for the 2018 to 2019 academic year):

• progress
• attainment
• English and mathematics progress
• retention
• destinations

 

Performance Tables

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

The Curriculum

You must publish the following information about your school’s curriculum:

• the content of your school curriculum in each academic year for every subject, including Religious Education even if it is taught as part of another subject or subjects, or is called something else
• the names of any phonics or reading schemes you’re using in key stage 1
• a list of the courses available to pupils at key stage 4, including GCSEs
• how parents or other members of the public can find out more about the curriculum your school is following

Your approach to the curriculum should also include how you are complying with your duties in the Equality Act 2010 and the Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 about making the curriculum accessible for those with disabilities or special educational needs.

An appropriate method for displaying this information is to use downloadable documents. For example, if you use curriculum map files, with one file being used for each year group, then these maps can be shown as downloadable documents. 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.

Careers programme information

You must publish information about the school’s careers programme. This information must relate to the delivery of careers guidance to year 8 to 13 pupils in accordance with section 42A of the Education Act 1997. For the current academic year, you must include:

• the name, email address and telephone number of the school’s careers leader
• a summary of the careers programme, including details of how pupils, parents, teachers and employers may access information about the careers programme
• how the school measures and assesses the impact of the careers programme on pupils
• the date of the school’s next review of the information published

Read the statutory guidance for schools on careers guidance and access for education and training providers for more information. The statutory guidance also contains further information about a policy statement that you must publish to comply with section 42B of the Education Act 1997, commonly known as the ‘Baker Clause’. The policy statement must set out the circumstances in which providers of technical education and apprenticeships will be given access to year 8 to 13 pupils.

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

You must publish details of your school’s behaviour policy. The policy must comply with Section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006.

Complaints procedure

You must publish details of your school’s complaints procedure, which must comply with section 29 of the Education Act 2002.

You must also publish any arrangements for handling complaints from parents of children with SEND about the support the school provides.

Charging and Remissions policy

You must publish your school’s charging and ‘remissions’ policies (this means when you cancel fees). The policies must include details of:

• the activities or cases where your school will charge pupils’ parents
• the circumstances where your school will make an exception on a payment you would normally expect to receive under your charging policy

Equality Policy

As public bodies, local-authority-maintained schools must comply with the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act 2010 and the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017. This means you must publish:

• details of how your school complies with the public sector equality duty - you must update this every year
• your school’s equality objectives - you must update this at least once every 4 years

The Equality Act 2010 and Advice for Schools provides information as to how your school can demonstrate compliance, for example, including details of how your school is:

• eliminating discrimination (see the Equality Act 2010)
• advancing equality of opportunity – between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it
• consulting and involving those affected by inequality, in the decisions your school or college takes to promote equality and eliminate discrimination (affected people could include parents, pupils, staff and members of the local community)

Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) information

You must publish an Information Report on your website about the implementation of your school’s policy for pupils with SEN and should update it annually.

You should update any changes occurring during the year as soon as possible. The report must comply with section 69 of the Children and Families Act 2014, meaning that it must contain:

• the ‘SEN Information’ specified in schedule 1 to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014. (Statutory guidance on this is contained in section 6.79 to 6.82 of the Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years)
• information as to:
  • the arrangements for the admission of disabled pupils
  • the steps you have taken to prevent disabled pupils from being treated less favourably than other pupils
  • the facilities you provide to help disabled pupils to access the school
  • the plan prepared under paragraph 3 of schedule 10 to the Equality Act 2010 (accessibility plan) for:
    • increasing the extent to which disabled pupils can participate in the school’s curriculum
    • improving the physical environment of the school for the purpose of increasing the extent to which disabled pupils are able to take advantage of education and benefits, facilities or services provided or offered by the school
    • improving the delivery to disabled pupils of information which is readily accessible to pupils who are not disabled

PE and Sport Premium for Primary Schools

If your school receives PE (physical education) and sport premium funding, you must publish:

• the amount of premium received
• a full breakdown of how it has been spent
• the impact the school has seen on pupils’ PE, physical activity, and sport participation and attainment
• how the improvements will be sustainable in the future

You are also required to publish the percentage of pupils within your year 6 cohort who met the national curriculum requirement to:

• swim competently, confidently, and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
• use a range of strokes effectively
• perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

Coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium

If your school gets the coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium grant in academic year 2020 to 2021, you should publish details of:

• how it is intended that the grant will be spent
• how the effect of this expenditure on the educational attainment of those pupils at the school will be assessed

Read further information on the coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium.

Pupil Premium & Year 7 Literacy and Numeracy Catchup Funding

You must publish a strategy for the school’s use of the pupil premium. DfE has published templates to help schools present their pupil premium strategy statements.

You may wish to plan your pupil premium use over 3 years. You should aim to update the online strategy statement by the end of the autumn term each year to reflect your plans for the academic year after assessing the needs of your pupils, both new and existing.

For the current academic year, you must include:

• your school’s pupil premium grant allocation amount
• a summary of the main barriers to educational achievement faced by eligible pupils at the school
• how you’ll spend the pupil premium to overcome those barriers and the reasons for that approach
• how you’ll measure the effect of the pupil premium
• the date of the next review of the school’s pupil premium strategy

For the previous academic year, you must include:

• how you spent the pupil premium allocation
• the effect of the expenditure on pupils

We understand that evaluating the pupil premium’s impact in the 2019 to 2020 academic year will present difficulties as a result of reduced numbers of pupils having attended between March and July 2020.

Instead, schools may wish to monitor and report on the grant’s impact at the end of the current financial year, bearing in mind their duty to update this information at least annually, covering the whole period since September 2019.

Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium

If your school has received year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium fundingfor the 2019 to 2020 academic year, you must publish:

• details of how you spent your allocation for that year
• how your use of that allocation made a difference to the attainment of the pupils who benefit from the funding

As final payments of the Year 7 catch-up premium were made in relation to the 2019 to 2020 academic year, the 2020 to 2021 academic year will be the last year on which schools must report how this funding was used.

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.

Governance

You must publish information on the governing body in line with the constitution of governing bodies of maintained schools statutory guidance. This should include:

• details of the structure and responsibilities of the governing body and its committees
• the full names of the Chair of the governing body and Chair of each committee information about each governor, including their:
  • full name, date of appointment, term of office, date they stepped down (where applicable) and who appointed them (in accordance with the governing body’s instrument of government)
  • relevant business and financial interests including:
    • governance roles in other educational institutions
    • any material interests arising from relationships between governors or relationships between governors and school staff (including spouses, partners and close relatives)
  • attendance record at governing body and committee meetings over the last academic year

You should also publish the same information for associate members making it clear whether they have voting rights on any of the committees to which they have been appointed.

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.

Financial information

You must publish:

• how many school employees (if any) have a gross annual salary of £100,000 or more in increments of £10,000 - we recommend using a table to display this
• a link to the webpage which is dedicated to your school on the schools financial benchmarking service - follow the prompts to find your school’s specific page

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.