At our Annual Ofsted Ready Website Event one of the questions we asked our delegates at the start of the day was “What is the biggest road block you have with website compliance right now?”. One of the common answers was “getting information from colleagues”. We handle the management of website projects day to day we thought it would be helpful to share with you some of our advice for requesting information from people.

Establish what is outstanding

Share your findings

Once you know what is outstanding you perhaps need to share it with SLT. It’s helpful for the people responsible for the school overall to be aware of your compliance status, your plan to improve this and that you will be requesting information from other staff members. It may also be necessary for them to help chase up staff members who don’t respond to emails with the information you request…although I would hope this wouldn’t be a problem for most people!

Request the information

When requesting information it’s really important to help them to help you. Make sure you set your expectations fully. Again, this will save you making multiple requests and not getting the correct information in full.  A couple of top tips:

• Set a deadline – its important to set a deadline for your request. Be realistic with this. Staff at school are often wearing multiple hats. Give them an appropriate length of time to get this information to you.
• Make them aware of the requirements – don’t just make a request for “Pupil Premium Information”. Make sure you request “Pupil Premium Information including the following points….”

When we report back to schools regarding their compliance status, they often tell us that they have the up-to-date information held somewhere at school. They just haven’t published it on the school website, either because they don’t know it needs to go there or because they have forgotten. But if it is not on the website you risk Ofsted finding that your website is not compliant – thats why its so important to make sure the content is on there.

It is not necessary for everyone at school to be aware of all of the requirements for school websites. However the individual or team responsible for compliance needs to be communicating effectively with the wider team to make sure the site has on all the information that is required.

Update the site

Once you have received all of your content it is important to update the site. Make sure you are making the most of all of the features in the Schudio software. They will help you to present your content in a compliant and user friendly way.

If you have any concerns about your website compliance there is help available! Take a look through our previous blog posts. There is a wealth of website best practice and compliance tips to read.  There is also a course available on SchudioTV that will take you through each of the requirements step by step and provide a detailed explanation on each step.

Or perhaps you are not up to date with the latest features in the Schudio software. Why not attend our Essential School Website Training session to refresh your skills? There are sessions available online or in person.