Contact Details is the first requirement found in the school website requirements guide. This section of your website is SO important, yet when I audit a Schools website or check over the website the contact details section isn’t fully compliant. The requirements for this section are very straightforward and easy to follow. This leads me on to asking myself, Why haven’t schools nailed their contact details? Throughout this blog, I will set you up perfectly for you to go away and make the best contact us section arguably ever. All you need to do is take on board my advice.

What if I don’t have a website?

This is the first year Ofsted have mentioned schools without a website. You MUST still publish all the requirements that are required for a school on a webpage. I have 3 suggestions for you to overcome this:

1. If you are part of a trust you can create a page on their website where you can add all the documents and policies that you need as a school, including contact details.
2. Create a Wix page. Within this, you can upload all of your statutory content
3. Get in contact with us through hi@schudio.com or call 0333 577 0753 and chat with one of our excellent team members about getting you a website through Schudio. This will be the best decision you will ever make. After adding coffee into your life of course.

The first two points above won’t allow parents to get an idea of what life at your school is like. This is why we can’t stress enough how important it is to have a full website in which you can show off your school life and add your statutory content too. If you have to compete with other schools nearby, why knock yourself down by not having a full school website.

Name of your School/College

I am not going to dwell on this too much as you should already have your Schools name plastered on your website. Especially on your home page and on your contact details page. If you haven’t done this already, well…

Postal Address of your School/College

This should be found in at least 2 places on your website:

1. In the footer of your website
2. On your contact details page

These are the best places to add your postal address in. Please make sure you spell towns and road names right. There is nothing more embarrassing than not being able to spell your school postal address. If you are a Schudio client you have a section in your CMS where you will put your postal address in and this will automatically add it to the footer of your website and on your contact details page. You can edit this from Information > Contact Details.

Telephone Number

If your school has a phone (which you should as we’re in 2021 not 1921) put it on your website. Similarly to your postal address make sure this appears in at least your website footer and contact details page. If anyone in your school has direct numbers like your Headteacher or SEN leader, add this to your contact page. Parents will appreciate this so much even if it’s a small job for you to do. Some schools even use Fax as well so if you are one of these rare few that use fax make sure you add this onto your footer and contact details page.

Name of the member of staff who deals with queries from parents and other members of the public

This is one of my pet peeves when schools/colleges don’t include this on their website. Please Please Please let me and anyone looking to contact your school know who we are going to be talking to. It’s like going on a blind date, highly scary and completely unnecessary. You just need to add the persons name who they will speak to on the phone or through email. This adds a lot friendlier feel to your website and could potentially start the blossoming of a beautiful relationship.

Name of your Headteacher or Principal

This is an easy one to do if this is not already put on your website. Think of your headteacher or Principal and then put their name on your website. I would definitely recommend adding this to your contact us page. However, I would suggest adding a Headteachers welcome page on your website where they can add their picture, their name, contact details and also add a speech welcoming people to the website.

This is lovely for prospective parents to see as they can see who the headteacher is and even read a little about them and the school. This adds a warm effect to your school’s website so I would highly recommend doing this. This is part of Nathaniel’s Website Requirements guide so make sure you do it.

Name and address of the chair of the governing body (if you have one)

Whenever I perform a Schudio Pro Audit I can almost guarantee that this has been missed by the school. I am not sure how though as this is very easy to fix. This again can be on your contact details page. I would suggest a sentence or two detailing out who the chair of the governing body is, their contact details and their address, this could be your school address if you don’t want to use their personal one. It doesn’t matter which one as long as one of them is on there.

Name and details of your SEN co-ordinator (SENCO) if you’re a mainstream school

Are you a school? Are you a mainstream school? If you answered yes to either of those questions then you need to add your SEN details to your website. Like all the others there is two places I would recommend you put these, as always put these on your contact details page. But you can also put them on your SEN page where I trust that you have your SEN Policy and report. These will be the places where parents and even Ofsted will look for this information so if you add it into both then you can ensure they find it.

 

The next section is for Academies and Free School so if that doesn’t cover your school you can skip to the end.

Academies or free schools should also publish details about the owner

• If the school’s owner is an individual, you should publish the proprietor’s full name and contact details (address and a telephone number)
• If the school’s owner is a body of persons, you should publish the address and telephone number of its office

With the information above I would recommend adding this onto your contact details page, or you can create a specific page entirely for this information. You could even push the boat out a little and do both. Go on I know you want to.

Where are you now with your Contact Details?

The only right answer to the question above is that you have smashed it. I won’t accept anything. You will have now be compliant with the contact details section of the school website requirements guide, this is the first section done and dusted. There are another 23 sections now for you to be compliant with or 24 if you’re a multi-academy trust. Make sure you download the guide I have mentioned so you can follow along and get your statutory content sorted.

Alternatively, you can perform an audit on your website using the Schudio tool you get as part of your website package. You could also email us at hi@schudio.com or support@schudio.com and inquire about getting me or a member of the Schudio team to perform a Schudio Pro Audit on your website.