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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

School website

18 replies

LewishamTeacher · 14/10/2010 21:39

I have namechanged for this because I'm in the process of revamping my school's website and could do with finding out how it appears to 'outsiders'.

If you have a couple of minutes please visit my school and let me know what you think. There's a 9-item survey if you're feeling really enthusiastic...

Disclaimer: current design etc. is nothing to do with me so I won't be offended/get big-headed.

Thank you MN :)

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Changebagsandgladrags · 14/10/2010 22:26

OK, sorry this is a bit negative (OK alot negative). I found the pages (gallery & news) really slow to load and therefore got bored. Not my browser either as other sites loaded up fine. I'm on a fast-ish broadband.

twolittleflyingmonkeys · 14/10/2010 22:31

The pages loaded quickly for me - that wasn't a problem. It strikes me as rather grey though! Also for prospective parents there isn't actually a lot of information to give an idea of the kind of school it is or Ofsted reports, children's comments about school life etc - it looks very useful for those who already have children there though.

Goblinchild · 14/10/2010 22:37

I liked the fact it had a lot of pictures showing the children doing some very exciting stuff, and you've made a good start on it.
Just a thought though, have you got parental permission for all those photos to be available on an open site? Our parents gave permission for photos on moodle which is password protected, but very few did for the website.

kreecherlivesupstairs · 15/10/2010 07:48

Jennie May seems to do all the work! I liked it, it looks a lot easier to navigate than my DD's school website.
I wondered too if you had permission for the photographs. DD has been at several schools where, for various security reasons, parents refused permission. DD seemed to be a star in her Bangkok school's webpage

DontCallMeBaby · 15/10/2010 08:06

I don't like the package that's obviously been used to put that together - it seems rather bloated, putting extra clicks in in order to do anything. For example, when I click on that 'for website survey, click here!' I expect to see a new page with the survey on, not the links popping up down the side - which I NOW notice is not the only change, the link to the survey has become visible under the photo, but I didn't notice. I'm getting the error Error in mythreadglobal_end(): 1 threads didn't exit a lot, which doesn't help, as I assumed the link hadn't worked at first.

I got bored waiting for a gallery to load, and didn't bother.

It's missing Ofsted link, prospectus, anything about the local area, governors, staff ... it strikes me as a reasonable portal for parents who want to know the latest news, and who can be bothered to wait for the photos to load up so they can see their own child, but not a lot of use for prospective parents or people with any other interest in the school

hocuspontas · 15/10/2010 08:12

Agree. You need a who's who, admissions link, prospectus link, school vision statement. There isn't really an introductory page to me.

Hassled · 15/10/2010 08:13

What Don'tCallMeBaby said - where's the link to the most recent Ofsted? That should be on the home page - and the only thing I could see about the Governing Body was bizarrely under blogs. Who are they, how can you contact them? Is there an active PTA? A school council? Are you an Eco school?

Where are your policies? They should be prominent - especially a Teaching & Learning Policy or some indication of how the National Curriculum is delivered.

I can't even see immediately if this is a Primary, a Junior, an Infant - what's your intake? What's your admissions policy? If you want your child to go there, what do you do?

The design/layout seems fine, but there is a load of quite basic information that is missing. No one cares about blogs - they want facts.

ArachnoPhantom · 15/10/2010 09:57

There needs to be links to school documents eg prospectus, newsletters, ofsted reports, map & directions to school possibly too on the front page.

Like Hassled has said I don't know if this is an infant, junior or primary school so perhaps put a strap line to say "welcome to our infant/junior/primary school".

The gallery took to long to load.

Clarabel22 · 15/10/2010 10:32

I'm afraid I found the numerous photos of individual children far too intrusive and not appropriate for the web. Also some galleries took a long time to load and perhaps you should consider making the photos smaller, e.g. 30-40k max.
I just want information, clearly and simply presented and totally up to date.
Aesthetically, I really loved the wood background the France page - can I ask, where did you get this from??

luciemule · 15/10/2010 10:45

I like the look but not enough school info
*Ofsted
*Term topics
*Class information
*download our prospectus
*meet the staff
*newsletters
*links to educational websites (might have been but can't remember

Madsometimes · 15/10/2010 12:09

I liked the fact that there were photos of the children. We also have pictures of the children on our school website, and have signed a consent form to allow this. I find that school websites with no photos of children very odd. I have seen some which show photos of empty classrooms.

However, I agree with other posters that a school website needs to fulfil a duel purpose. A place for existing parents to visit and find out about what is going on in school and when, and also for prospective parents to learn about the school.

On the homepage, you need a brief desciption of the school, and a link to ofsted, plus a photo.

It is nice to have a section for each class, and I always like to see samples of work scanned in for each class.

A school website is a big ask to design IMO if you are not a website designer. Your nickname says that you are a teacher, so I think it will be a lot of work to do if you also have teaching responsibilities. Our school paid for a designer to do the website, and people from the office maintain it day to day.

admission · 15/10/2010 12:17

This is website for the school. It is not a website to publicise the school to parents, pupils and the general public.

If you look at the other comments so far it is obvious that we are all expecting a school website to have the things in it that we need to know about the school - luciemule's list is a good starting point.

I think the other issue that you need to think through is that a lot of the information on the site is old. There is nothing worse than people seeing old news, out of date info etc. So part of your brief has got to be does the school keep the site uptodate and topical.

Original poster

LewishamTeacher · 15/10/2010 18:18

Thank you so much for all taking the time to have a look. It will help me enormously to have evidence of others saying that the website needs to include far more in the way of useful, day-to-day and up-to-date information.

I am a teacher (as was Jennie who appears to do all the updates - that's the only admin login!) so am looking to go for something new that means we can update it more easily inhouse instead of relying upon a web designer.

The children's parents give/decline consent for website photographs when they join the school. Children whose parents do not wish their photographs to appear online aren't in the photographs. It's a 2-form-entry school though so we have 400 or so children, the majority of whom are allowed to appear on the website. We seek additional, specific consent for photographs that we wish to use in other publications/publcity material.

Keep the comments coming...it'll help my case for change.

Thank you again.

OP posts:

minipen · 15/10/2010 18:29

AT first look it looks good, great colours & bright image but a quick glance seems the information is outdated I clicked on the blog, last updated 2008,

Pictures took ages to load, a smaller selection would have been better in my opinion.

Seems to be very little information, holiday lists (my term dates doesn't have any information in it) newsletters, date for your diarys, calendar is not very clear at all. Also I keep getting error messages on the page Error in mythreadglobal_end(): 1 threads didn't exit

Sorry am dashing, hope message makes sense!

RustyBear · 15/10/2010 18:31

Are your galleries done with Flash? Because I can't see them at all on my iPad, nor a lot of the rest of the content.

Original poster

LewishamTeacher · 16/10/2010 22:25

RB, the galleries aren't done with Flash. I'm not quite sure why the error message keeps coming up but as the school have to pay every time the website designer is used to make changes I'll probably leave them there for a while longer. I had thought the error only appeared when I was logged in.

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Ne11 · 17/10/2010 00:02

Ever thought of using a company like Primary Site? (I don't work for them btw, just use them!)
They build the site and they are dead easy to maintain and update.
Obviously there is an annual fee, but although they only use a few templates the site definitely becomes 'yours'. You choose the pages you want and pay accordingly.
It is also much easier if there is a subsequent change of staff to maintain continuity.

Original poster

LewishamTeacher · 17/10/2010 19:10

Ne11 - I spoke to someone from School Jotter last week and received a demo of their services which were impressive. Sadly I'm not sure the budget will stretch to a paid for website (hence the survey questions asking if anyone would be willing to help).

A couple of the sites people have recommended are hosted by Primary Site so it's something that will be looked at.

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