School websites: is yours fantastic?

[BonsoirAnna]

Or do you know of other ones that you can recommend?

I am working on a project for part of my DD's school website and would like to identify best practices.

TIA

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how about this one?

it is very useful when the weekly newsletters don't find their way into DD's scool bag.

scHool, sorry.

Thank you very much - I will take a good look at it

How about this

or
this?

or
this?

You have to think about the customers of the website and their particular needs.

For current parents - it is to know dates of school events (IMO), and links to school policies and general information

For current students - links to homework and resources

For prospective parents - marketing of the school.

Mine are not worthy of linking ... but just to say it's really important that they are easily updateable and that there are staff able to update. Primary school had lovely website designed by teacher who since left - now a year out of date as nobody has time/knowledge. Pretty pics but no useful content.

Secondary website designed by 6th form - quite good but again updating issue; apart from main page and newsletter, there are whole areas saying 'awaiting content'

Isn't the Woodlands Junior School website usually held up as an example of a great site? There's certainly loads of info & links on it & it often appears in google searches.

here

How about Hollybush

This has only been set up by some parents in the last month or so.

We don't have a school website, we have a school Blog. Each class teacher and their children update it weekly (or are supposed to!) with things they have been doing each week. The secretaries update it each week with the contents of the newsletter. The headteacher puts comments on each week too.

Because it's a blog, it's incredibly easy to update which avoids the problems Primula mentioned of things going out of date, and the responsibility falling on one person to keep up updated.

It isn't generally used as a marketing tool for the school, but is widely used by parents to keep up to date with what's going on in school. We hold half termly blog workshops where parents without internet access can come in a have a look, and practice their IT skills.

Thanks everyone, especially Hassled .

I appreciate you taking the time, but I'm not looking for general marketing advice here (we already have a high quality working site) - I want to look at a very few specific aspects of school sites as I am working on one very specific item. Thanks.

an example of a good school website,IMO.

A lot of schools now are developing learning platforms - which may be integrated with their school website, or separate from it.
Our school's website is hosted by Uniservity - it's one of the ones on the list, though I'm not going to tell you which one! The websites on that lost vary massively from those who haven't really got started yet to those who are already integrating their learning & management systems and ensuring every child has their own personal learning space. If you want a good example of what can be done with a learning platform, look at Radstock School on that list (though you won't be able to see the children's own workspaces as they are not visible without a login)