Schools are required to publish certain information online – which in practice means you must have a school website. Before embarking on an audit of the style and contents of your website, one discussion that might usefully take place is why the school needs a website at all – what is its purpose? A marketing tool, a portal for your VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), a source of information for current and prospective parents, ……. or ONLY to fulfil the DfE requirement for your school to publish key information online ?
August 2015:
The Academies Financial Handbook ( Click here to view ) issued in July 2015 now says the following: (can be found on page 20)
“Paragraph 2.5.2
In the interests of transparency, an academy trust must publish on its website up-to-date details of its governance arrangements in a readily accessible format.
This must include:
• the structure and remit of the members, board of trustees, its committees and local governing bodies, and the full names of the chair of each (where applicable)
• for each member who has served at any point over the past 12 months, their full names, date of appointment, date they stepped down (where applicable), and relevant business and pecuniary interests including governance roles in other educational institutions
• for each trustee and local governor who has served at any point over the past 12 months, their full names, date of appointment, term of office, date they stepped down (where applicable), who appointed them (in accordance with the trust’s articles), and relevant business and pecuniary interests including governance roles in other educational institutions
• for each trustee their attendance records at board and committee meetings over the last academic year
• for each local governor their attendance records at local governing body meetings over the last academic year”
Q. What does “readily accessible format” mean? It means that the information should be published directly onto a webpage, not squirreled away / recorded within the depths of a lengthy pdf that has to be downloaded and scanned for the relevant paragraphs. “Trusts should ensure their governance information is readily accessible on a webpage without the need to download or open a separate document.”