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Statutory Information for school websites

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Blog ImageStatutory Information for school websites

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 published in September 2014 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 or Trust 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 February 2021. 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 here. 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.

What maintained schools must publish online

Note: Where additional and significant notes are needed, they are shown as a click-through button in the text below to reach the relevant section on the .GOV website.

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).

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

 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.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Commonly, we provide a web link to the local authority admissions website within the the webpage. 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 Reports

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 2019 to 2020 academic year as these have not been published as performance measures by the Secretary of State. You must, however, continue to display your 2018 to 2019 performance measures until new performance measures are published. You should clearly mark that these performance measures are not current. 

Follow this link for .gov notes

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.

Follow this link for .gov notes

Remote education

You must publish information about your school’s remote education provision on your website. An optional template is available to support schools with this requirement.

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.

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.

Follow this link for .gov notes

Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium

If your school has received year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium funding for 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.

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

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

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Equality Objectives

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.

Follow this link for .gov notes

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.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

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.

Governors' Information and Duties

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

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.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

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

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

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.

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.

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We blog from time to time when there is something worth blogging about! We look at how schools change how they use their websites and how we can respond to those changes and when we have something really interesting to say, we will! Thanks for reading!

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