All school websites do the basics well. They’re repositories for important facts – Term dates, uniform policy, admissions process – all the mandatory, statutory content that we know is required by Ofsted, DfE guidelines and so on. Many will have gone beyond those minimums, making sure there’s a phone number somewhere, for example. That’s the baseline, a website functioning at its minimum: a set of facts to answer predictable questions. But some school websites do something more.
It paints pictures in your mind. We all remember paintings better than lists of colours. A prospective parent doesn’t read about a school purely to identify if it’ll meet their child’s needs. They read to see if the match goes deeper. Does the ethos of this place chime? Will our child thrive here? Will they be happy? These are deep questions, so your answers can’t consist only of data and factual content: ‘We have great SAT results.’ Such questions go further. How do you know this is the right school for your son, daughter, or grandchild? This gap – between a website that informs and one that inspires – is easy to gloss over, but it’s the difference that makes all the difference, and it’s often the difference that gets lost as school leaders juggle multiple priorities.
Whose voice is the website written in? Some schools speak in an institutional voice. Not necessarily a bad thing, but particularly where there is too much passive tense and repetition, it starts to sound like teachers talking to, not with, children. A bland, overly formal register puts psychological distance between visitors and the school. You are made to feel like you’re approaching a castle wall, and an over-attentive gatekeeper is waiting to decide what facts to impart in a slightly disapproving manner. Other schools write in a more human voice. They use phrases such as ‘children’, ‘our’ and ‘us’ – a little warmer than ‘pupils’. Quotes pepper the pages, from teachers and, crucially, pupils. Suddenly, you feel less alienated and less put off. For Websites for schools, contact https://www.fsedesign.co.uk/websites-for-schools
If you look at most school websites, you’ll start to get a sense of deja vu. Most images are generic. The same shots appear across multiple sites, the same stock photography. Maybe they’re simply trying to avoid any potential controversy by staying low-risk and featureless, and maybe they just want the background to be blank so they can write lots of text. Sometimes the imagery is recent, but it’s not relevant to what parents are looking for. They don’t need 12 photos of the new headteacher. What they want is a glimpse into life in the school. If you just use photos of buildings, you might as well post diagrams. But if you use images of children engaging with lessons, activities, events, exhibitions and performances, then you give families an honest view. It shows a rich educational environment.
