Giving your school website a refresh for the new school year may seem daunting and a task that you keep putting off. iTCHYROBOT’s Top tips will give you the push you need and wonder why you didn’t do it earlier.

Your school has sent hundreds of letters, updated your curriculum content and no doubt amended your policies at least a dozen times throughout the year. These tips will help you to run through your site quickly and effectively so you start the year squeaky clean and ready to hit the new school year!

Investing in a website with an intuitive content management system can make this process a whole lot easier! You can access and update your school website anytime you wish. Hopefully you will still remember your username and password!

TIP 1. Image check

Not only is it an essential requirement with GDPR but also visually changes the look of your website instantly. 

Go through your website and ensure that all your Year 6 pupils have been removed as you no longer have permission to use their data. 

Review your parent consent forms and check that you have no pupils that you do not have permissions for.

TIP 2. Staff review

Your staff may have changed roles and will most probably have changed year groups. Ensure all of the staff have their new roles on the website and any staff that have left over the past year have had all of their data removed. 

TIP 3. Term Dates 

It’s time to take off your previous year Term dates and add on the following:

Term dates 19/20 and 20/21. 

Make sure you include any PD days too and remember VE day is now on a Friday!!

TIP 4. Calendar of Events

Remove all of your old events from your events Calendar and spend half an hour adding the events you know to your website calendar. This will be a great tool to direct parents to and one of the most popular features accessed by parents on all school websites.

TIP 5. Letters, Newsletters & News

It’s time for that Spring clean (or Autumn clean in this case). Either remove or archive all of your letters from the previous year.

You may want to keep your Newsletters and News items for the previous year as a reference tool so simply archive these as 2018/19 Newsletters and start with a clean page for this year’s.

You may have already written a Back to school newsletter for all parents which would be a great opening for this section of your website so it doesn’t look blank!

Why not make your first News post ‘A welcome back to school’ post!?

TIP 6. Curriculum

Your Curriculum is probably one of the largest sections of your school website and close attention must be given to ensure you are publishing your school curriculum content for the current year for each subject for each year group. Don’t forget to add the Phonics and Reading schemes your school is following!

TIP 7. Policies

It is worthwhile ensuring that all of your public policies are still in date and compliant with current regulations. As a reminder for what policies must be published online, take a look at our Ofsted guide here.

Policies that will definitely have changed or will at least need an update will be your admissions policy.

[For iTCHYROBOT clients, don’t forget to use your Policy Manager as a quick way to check your policy compliance and to get all your policies digitally signed!]

TIP 8. Governor details

Have you made any changes to your Governing Body? If so, you will need to update your Governors page on the website.

As a quick check also ensure that your previous meeting dates are up to date and you have your new dates published.

TIP 9. Statutory requirements

The list is ever increasing so it is helpful to remind yourself what this content is. As a reminder you can either download our easy to use checklists by clicking the link below or visiting the DFe website for more information.

All of iTCHYROBOT school websites come with an integrated Ofsted checker so if you have one of our website this should make this job super quick!

TIP 10. Welcome message

It’s a new year so why not refresh your welcome message on your home page as a nice ‘Welcome Back’ to all of your staff, pupils and parents! 

And finally, don’t forget to tell your parents to visit your school website whenever you can!

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