School Website Compliance Guide 2026/27
Tech for Education
Keeping your school website up to date is about much more than adding the latest news or changing term dates.
For schools, there is information that must be made available online, alongside other information the Department for Education recommends schools publish. Requirements can also differ depending on whether you are a maintained school, academy or part of a multi academy trust.
The difficult part is often not knowing that information needs to be there. It is knowing what needs updating, where it should sit and whether the version currently on your website is still correct.
This guide takes a practical look at school website compliance for 2026/27 and the areas schools should be reviewing.
If you would prefer to work through your website section by section, you can also download our free School Website Compliance Checklist.
Are They Ofsted Website Requirements or DfE Requirements?
You will often hear people refer to "Ofsted school website requirements", but that does not tell the full story.
Most statutory publishing requirements come from Department for Education guidance and the legislation or agreements that apply to your type of school.
The DfE publishes separate guidance for maintained schools and for academies and academy trusts, and it makes an important distinction between information that must be published and information that schools should publish.
Ofsted is still relevant. Your latest Ofsted report is one of the pieces of information schools may need to make available online, and keeping your website clear and current helps make important information easier for parents, carers, governors and others to find.
Rather than treating compliance as an "Ofsted job", it makes more sense to build regular website reviews into the school year.
Maintained Schools and Academies Have Different Requirements
One of the easiest mistakes to make is using a generic school website checklist without checking whether it applies to your setting.
Maintained schools have their own DfE publishing guidance. Academies and academy trusts have separate guidance, with some different responsibilities around areas such as governance, accounts and financial information.
There is plenty of crossover, but they are not identical.
Before carrying out a full website review, make sure you know which guidance applies to your school and whether individual responsibilities sit with the school, local authority or academy trust.
Contact Information Should Be Easy to Find
Basic school information should never be buried several clicks into a website.
Depending on your setting, this can include your postal address, telephone number, appropriate staff contact details and information about who parents, carers or members of the public should contact with enquiries.
Mainstream maintained schools also need to publish contact information for their SENCO.
This is a good example of where compliance and good website design overlap. Information can technically exist on a website and still be difficult for someone to find.
A parent should not need to search through several pages simply to find out who to contact.
Check Your Admissions Information
Admissions requirements depend on the type of school and who acts as the admission authority.
Schools responsible for their own admission arrangements need to make sure the relevant information is available and current. Where admissions are handled elsewhere, the website should provide clear information directing parents and carers to the correct process.
Dates matter here too. Admission arrangements, in year applications and appeal information can have specific publication timescales, so leaving last year's information online can quickly cause confusion.
Treat admissions pages as live information rather than documents that only need looking at once.
Review Behaviour and Complaints Information
Policies are one of the most common places for school websites to become untidy.
A newer document gets uploaded but the old version remains. A policy changes name but an old link still exists elsewhere. A PDF gets replaced without checking whether links from other pages still work.
Maintained schools must publish their behaviour and complaints policies. Academies also have requirements around complaints procedures and are encouraged to make behaviour information available.
Whatever type of school you are, make sure the version parents can access is the version currently in use.
Make Curriculum Information Useful to Parents
Curriculum information should explain what pupils are learning rather than simply provide a folder full of documents.
Maintained schools are required to publish information about the curriculum for each academic year and subject, with additional requirements depending on the key stages they provide.
There are related expectations for academies within the DfE's separate guidance.
For primary schools, this can also include information about phonics or reading schemes. Secondary schools have additional areas to consider, including courses, qualifications and careers information.
The aim should be to make the curriculum understandable to parents as well as meeting the relevant publishing requirements.
Keep SEND Information Current
SEND information deserves its own regular review.
Maintained schools must publish an SEN information report, and the DfE states that it should be updated annually with changes made during the year reflected as soon as possible.
The report covers much more than a short description of SEND provision. It includes information around support, admission arrangements for disabled pupils, facilities and accessibility planning.
If your SEND information has not been reviewed recently, it should be one of the first areas you check.
Review Pupil Premium and PE and Sport Premium Information
Funding pages can easily become a collection of documents from different academic years.
Where the relevant funding applies, schools need to make sure required information is published and that current and previous information is clearly identified.
Pupil Premium information should reflect current spending and the impact of previous activity in line with DfE requirements.
Primary schools receiving PE and Sport Premium should also check the information they are required to publish and the relevant annual deadlines.
The easiest approach is to organise these areas by academic year rather than continually adding new files to one long page.
Do Not Forget Governance and Financial Information
Governance requirements vary between maintained schools and academy trusts, but both need to pay close attention to what is publicly available.
For maintained schools, this includes information about the governing body and relevant governance details.
There are also financial publishing requirements, including information relating to employees above specified salary thresholds and links to financial benchmarking information.
Academy trusts have additional requirements around governance, annual reports and accounts, and executive pay.
This is one area where copying the structure of another school's website can cause problems. Their governance structure and publishing responsibilities may not be the same as yours.
Equality and Accessibility Need Proper Attention
Accessibility is not just about whether a website works on a mobile phone.
It is about making information and digital services usable by as many people as possible, including people using assistive technology.
Government accessibility guidance includes requirements for public sector websites, although primary and secondary schools and nurseries have particular exemptions under the accessibility regulations. Important content people need to access a school's services remains within scope, and schools also have wider duties under the Equality Act.
Accessibility should therefore be considered whenever pages, documents, forms or website features are added.
Things such as unclear headings, poor colour contrast, inaccessible PDFs, missing descriptions for meaningful images and difficult navigation can all make information harder to use.
We have a separate guide explaining how to make your school website more accessible if this is an area you are currently reviewing.
Schools should also regularly review their website accessibility information to make sure it accurately reflects the website and provides clear information for users who experience accessibility problems.
Make Sure Your Ofsted Information Is Current
Schools should make their latest Ofsted report easy to access.
For maintained schools, the DfE says this can be either a copy of the most recent report or a link to the report on the Ofsted website.
Academies have similar publishing guidance.
If you link externally, check the link from time to time. If you upload reports directly to the website, make sure an older report has not accidentally been left as the most prominent version.
Check Results and Performance Information
Schools should also review the assessment and performance information relevant to their phase and setting.
The requirements vary between primary schools, secondary schools and post 16 provision, so this is another area where it is better to check the current DfE guidance rather than relying on an old website checklist.
Where a link to the government's school performance service is required, make sure it still leads to the correct school.
School Opening Hours and Uniform Information Matter Too
These are simple areas to overlook because they do not always feel like "compliance pages".
The DfE recommends that schools publish their official start and finish times and the total length of the compulsory school week.
Schools with a uniform should also make the policy easy to understand, including which items are required or optional, where branded items are needed and information about second hand uniform.
These pages are useful to families as well as being part of current DfE publishing guidance.
Keep Safeguarding Information Under Review
Safeguarding information should always be easy for the school community to find.
Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 came into force on 1 September 2026 and sets out the current statutory safeguarding guidance for schools and colleges in England.
Schools should make sure their safeguarding policies and procedures reflect the current guidance and that outdated information is not left sitting on the website.
We have covered the latest guidance in more detail in our Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 guide.
Watch for Old Documents, Broken Links and Duplicate Information
A school website can look completely up to date from the homepage while important information deeper in the site is several years old.
This often happens gradually.
Policies are replaced without removing the old version. Staff names change on one page but not another. PDFs are moved and links stop working. Old academic years remain above current information. The same policy appears in two locations and only one copy gets updated.
That is why a compliance review should look at the whole website rather than simply checking whether a page exists.
How Often Should You Review School Website Compliance?
There is no single review date that covers every piece of information on a school website.
Some information has specific publication or annual update requirements, while other information needs changing whenever circumstances change.
A practical approach is to carry out a wider website review at least once during the academic year, with smaller checks throughout the year around key policy, funding and statutory update dates.
Website compliance is much easier to manage when it becomes a regular task rather than something that happens immediately before an inspection or when someone notices a problem.
A Quick School Website Compliance Check
As a starting point, check that your website has:
- Current school and contact information
- The correct admissions information for your setting
- Current behaviour and complaints information
- Clear curriculum information
- Up to date SEND information
- Current Pupil Premium and PE and Sport Premium information where applicable
- The correct governance and financial information
- Current equality and accessibility information
- Your latest Ofsted and relevant performance information
- Current safeguarding information and policies
This is only a starting point. The exact information your school needs to publish depends on the type of school, its phase and the provision it offers.
For a more detailed review, download our free 2026/27 School Website Compliance Checklist.
Make Compliance Easier to Manage
A well organised school website should make information easy to update as well as easy to find.
If staff are struggling to work out where policies belong, old documents are difficult to remove or every update requires outside technical help, the problem may be the structure of the website rather than the information itself.
Our school website design service is built specifically around the needs of nurseries, schools and academies, with clear navigation, straightforward content management and ongoing support.
For schools happy with their existing website but needing help keeping it running, our school website hosting and support service provides ongoing technical support, maintenance and website assistance.
Need a Second Pair of Eyes on Your School Website?
Keeping a school website compliant does not need to mean rebuilding everything.
Sometimes it is simply a case of identifying what is missing, replacing outdated information and making important pages easier to find.
North East Schools works with nurseries, primary schools, secondary schools and academies across the North East, helping schools improve, manage and support their websites.
If you are unsure whether your current website is up to date, start with our free School Website Compliance Checklist or speak to our team about reviewing your existing website.