For many prospective parents and students, your school website will be the first port of call. Your school鈥檚 website will be the very first impression they get of what you offer. It is also very common for the DfE and Ofsted to regularly inspect your website to ensure that it is compliant with various pieces of legislation and policies. It is, therefore, essential that your site is regularly audited.
Let鈥檚 discuss this in a bit more depth.
1. Ensures Compliance with DfE & Ofsted Requirements
Both the Department for Education (DfE) and Ofsted have stringent requirements about the information that needs to be included on a school website. For example, your website legally needs to have pages dedicated to certain policies, SEND, and school governance. The problem? These requirements regularly change, and these changes are not always communicated in the best possible way. Plus, with the amount of work you likely need to perform on school administrative tasks, those that are communicated can easily be missed.
Unfortunately, while Ofsted does understand that these requirements can get missed, it will still have an impact on Ofsted reports (or other random inspections), which can result in the school getting rated down in certain areas.
Regular audits from a third-party will ensure that your website can stay up to date with the various requirements.
2. Identifies Hidden Gaps You Didn鈥檛 Know Existed
Many schools, incorrectly, assume that their website works fine. They believe if they don鈥檛 updated (which is a problem in itself), nothing can break on the website. This couldn鈥檛 be further from the truth.
A website that isn鈥檛 regularly updated can have:
- Missing documents e.g. if there are links to school timetables, policies, etc.
- Broken links.
- Outdated information
A lot of the time schools don鈥檛 even know that these issues exist. They assume everything is OK. There are some schools that run automated tools to try and check for these errors. The problem is that these tools don鈥檛 catch everything and, in some cases, they miss the context of certain information and can highlight errors when there aren鈥檛 any.
Human auditors, if they are experienced, will catch issues no other person or piece of software will.
3. Saves Time for Busy School Staff
Carrying out a proper school website audit takes a huge amount of time. Time that schools often cannot spare. Most schools cannot have their administrative staff spending hours cross-referencing documents to ensure their website is legally compliant. Not to mention that some of the guidance documents are a bit vague and can often have staff members guessing what they should do.
Putting it in the hands of an experienced school website will ensure that everything is done 鈥榖y the books鈥�. There will be no guesswork. The information on the website will be accurate as per the letter of the law, and the website will just work.
4. Improves Website Structure & Usability
The job of an auditor is not only do ensure that a website is compliant, but it is usable.
Many school websites are exceedingly tough to browse. The information may be there, but it may be hidden under layers of different links, and can be tricky to find. This isn鈥檛 good for inspectors or parents. The information needs to visible.
An auditor can give guidance on providing a better structure for the content of a website. Follow their advice, and your website offers much more clarity for those visiting.
5. Gives You a Clear Action Plan (Not Just Problems)
An auditor doesn鈥檛 just provide your school with a list of problems on your school鈥檚 website, they provide you with much-needed advice on how those problems can be solved. A good auditor will provide a checklist of problems, and solutions for fixing them.
A good auditor will also highlight which fixes should be a priority on your website, and which ones can be left a little (although, all problems should be fixed as soon as practical). A good auditor will also provide step-by-step improvements for the school鈥檚 website, making it easier to keep everything up to date, even if you have little experience with the changes that need to be made.
When Should You Get a School Website Audit?
At the absolute minimum, a website should be reviewed every year. In most cases, legal requirements will have changed during that period and data needs to be updated. In other cases, information about the school will also need to be updated in that period. So, an audit should happen. It ensures no problems are missed before you head into the new school year.
We also highly recommend that a website is audited before an Ofsted inspection. This will ensure that when Ofsted browses your website, and they will, they won鈥檛 find any issues.
If you have your website redesigned, have an audit carried out. This will ensure information is up-to-date, and any dead links are handled.
Finally, if you know DfE or Ofsted requirements are changing, get the website fixed.
What Makes a Good School Website Audit?
A school website should be human-led. No automation. Automation rarely catches all issues. In fact, in many cases, automation will throw up false positives. This means you may be spending time making corrections that don鈥檛 need to be made.
The auditor should always consider the latest DfE and Ofsted guidance, to ensure that the website meets requirements. So, an audit should only ever be carried out by an auditor experienced with schools in the UK.
Finally, an audit will not just highlight issues, but give clear, actionable recommendations about how they should be fixed.
5 Benefits of A School Website Audit
A school website audit will ensure that the site is compliant with the law, will save school staff time updating things, and ensure that everything is clear for both inspectors and parents. Having a proper audit carried out will remove uncertainty about whether your school website is fit for purpose.
Get in touch today to find out more about our audits for schools websites today.
