Across the country, school enrolment figures are down, some schools are losing numbers thick and fast, looking at cutting hours and worse, closures.
So, what is the impact of having a poor school website for education practitioners who are hanging by a thread? Director of The Education Agency, Kirsty Rushton dissects the issue.
As with most businesses, a website acts as a window to a school, college, or university, and it can be a deciding factor for parent or guardian to enrol a child. Sadly, there seems to be a growing trend in the education sector where schools aren’t investing not just money but time into their websites. There are a multitude of factors to consider when thinking about the damaging impact of neglecting your school website.
You are potentially missing opportunities with new families or in-year transfers by not making your website accessible to an external search engine. If a family can’t find you online, they’ll move on to the next school which does appear on the search. When a website isn’t updated with new content, relevant information and the site health isn’t taken care of, Google penalises it. This means that your school is less likely to be found by a search engine if a new out of area family search “high school in X area” for example, or a local family searched Ofsted Good school locally.
Your website is the perfect place to convey your ethos, message, values and how the school feels. You can do it in more detail than on social media or in any print material offering a parent or guardian all the information they might need to make the right choice for their child’s education.
As mentioned, it’s a window to your school and allows your audience to connect and understand if your school is the right fit with aligning values.
Many schools simply use their website to tick boxes for Ofsted. Whilst having an Ofsted compliant website is essential, it shouldn’t be its main purpose. Readers will be able to tell. The website risks coming across as functional and cold, which may completely contradict your entire school environment.
A lot of schools are prioritising the school intranet systems such as Dojo for communication. Whilst this is great for keeping in touch with existing parents and guardians, it doesn’t allow for schools to showcase their message to the wider community. Not only does more external messaging support a school’s enrolment efforts, it also helps to build bonds and connections with the wider community. We know from experience working with schools that those with close ties locally have improved reputation, higher enrolment figures and ultimately perform better during Ofsted inspections.
A lot of providers offer school websites that are a copy and paste exercise, often giving schools the bare minimum of what they need. This makes it increasingly more difficult to update websites, resulting in a lack of appetite to invest. Schools are also finding themselves locked into lengthy, unbeneficial contracts with website suppliers, giving them a negative experience with digital marketing.
Searching for an appropriate provider, be that for website design and development, website hosting or website maintenance and communications is essential for supporting your school to achieve both high enrolment figures or first choice places, and a strong local reputation.