Requirements for school websitesStatutory Requirements of School Websites
From 1st September 2012, new regulations came into force regarding information required on school websites. These come as amendments to the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 and they apply to all schools and academies. |
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Governors should note that they are responsible for ensuring that the information below is published on the school website. All information displayed must be available if requested in paper copy at no charge. When information changes, updates to the school website must be made as soon as possible.
- Contact details: name, postal address, telephone number, to whom enquiries should be addressed
- Admission arrangements including over-subscription criteria (and VA only, by 28 February in each year, the appeals timetable)
- Links to the school's Ofsted and SIAMS Inspection Reports
- Curriculum provision, content and approach by academic year and by subject
- The school's most recent Key Stage 2 and 4 attainment and progress measure
- Link to the school's performance tables: www.education.gov.uk
- School curriculum information for each year group by subject, including phonics/reading schemes
- Whole-school policies: Behaviour; Religious Education; Collective Worship; charging and SEN/disability provisions
- Pupil premium allocation and use, and impact on attainment
- School's ethos and values
Reminder: Register of Governor's interests must now be published on schools website from 1st September 2015 for maintained schools
Recently updated statutory guidance provides that governors in maintained schools must now publish a register of their interests on the school website from 1st September 2015. The register must include relevant business interests, details of other schools where they are governors and relationships with any school staff, including spouses, partners and relatives. Academies have been required to publish such a register since last September and in a similar move parish councillors were required to publish financial interests and relationship details on websites in 2012.
Maintained Schools
The guidance was updated in August and the website must now also include details of the structure and remit of the governing body and any committees and the full names of the Chair of each. Governor’s interests should also be published and should include relevant business and pecuniary interests including governance roles in other educational institutions and material interests arising from relationships between governors or governors and school staff (including spouses, partners and school staff) The guidance now also states that governors attendance records at both governing body and committee meetings over the last academic year should be published. This information should also be published for associate members making clear whether they have voting rights on any of the committees they serve on. The guidance states that the information must be in a ‘readily accessible format’ which means being on a webpage without the need to download or open a separate document.
Academies
Academies have been required to publish relevant business and pecuniary interests of Members and Trustees. However, from 1st September 2015 the Academies Financial Handbook now requires Academies to also publish the business and pecuniary interests of local governors. If you have any queries or wish to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact Liane Atkin at: liane.atkin@drmnewcanglican.org.
As volunteers, Governors may feel understandably reluctant to have such details publically available on the school’s website. The National Governors Association have explained that the reasons behind this are due to the importance of those holding public office being open and transparent and last year Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw recommended this action following the investigation into the Trojan Horse claims in Birmingham. Many of you will already be aware of this new requirement and will no doubt be working with your local authority to ensure you have your register ready for publication on your website from 1st September.
You will have no doubt received example registers and guidance on these requirements from your Local Authority. In the event that you need further examples we have updated our example template register of interests to assist you in recording this information and this can be found below.
| Register of Interests template |
