school website is 3 years out of date!

[DisasterArea]

said on a letter home recently to check website if bad weather and a note would be posted.
so i have.
the term dates are from 2006-2007.
the yr 6 sats dates are 2007.
so if i want to find out if school is closed tomorrow do i have to wait 2 years?
a bit crap, no?

or yes? even

well...do you want someone who updates websites or who teaches your children. In primary schools unless there is someone with an interest it is hard to update. but yes it is a big crap why not offer your services to improve things

yeah, it's crap that it's out of date but it isn't really the teachers fault. Why can't one of the parents, such as yourself, be responsible for maintaining it?

i'd break it if i tried. but whats the point of either having a website if its not updated regularly and telling parents to check it for information when the information isn't there?
will ask them about it.
they also have me listed as one of their parent governors when i jacked that in about 3 years ago too.

If the website doesn't say "school closed Tuesday" then I'd expect the school to be open on Tuesday.

If I got to the school and it was closed, and nothing had been posted on the website, i'd tear them a new one

I checked dd3's school website today and it said 'download latest newsletter (July 2005)'

It was fun going through the staff list though because most of them left years ago and I had completely forgotten them.

I'm afraid a lot of schools are like this. I used to maintain my school's website at my previous school and it was a LOT of work. Actually teachers aren't really supposed to do it as it's not something that only a teacher could do - support staff could IYSWIM. Teachers really really really don't have the time!

Certainly there is no reason why support staff could not maintain a website, but its a matter of money. Support staff are not going to maintain a website for free. Many schools would far rather spend the money on educating the kids.

I am sure that your school would be grateful if you as a parent offered to do the work on a voluntary basis.

unfortunately maintaining a school website usually falls to the teacher who co-ordinates ICT so not only does that teacher have a full time class to teach, they are also responsible for making sure that subject is taught properly across the school, making sure the equipment is maintained, , troubleshooting etc...so unless they are superwoman (or man)...unfortunately school websites seem to fall by the wayside...although I do agree, you should not be told to check the site by the school if they know it is not going to be up to date.

I think that effective communication with parents is one of the areas on which OFSTED rates the school. And I think a website is but one for om communication. And I absolutely agree that information that is three years out of date is pathetic. There are many forms of communication (speaking to the teacher, written newsletter, website, etc.) And I think it is the head teachers job to see that these various forms of communication don't conflict with one another.

Surely it is the parents job to communicate with the school, and the schools job to communicate with the parents.

Make sure you have the right site. When I googled a school's site recently there were two and one was very out of date.

When choosing schools for DD we were put off by schools with poor websites. We thought it showed lack of attention to detail by the Head. Surely the IT dept could get the older, responsible children to update it as part of a project? What is the point of an IT Dept that doesn't do something as basic as updating the school website?