What schools are asked to do

• Have a music development plan, as set out in the .
• Publish a summary of it on the school website (first due before the 2024 to 2025 academic year).
• Update that summary before the start of each new academic year.

The template itself is not mandatory and schools can adapt it, for example by splitting it by key stage. Your local can help you write yours.

How to use this example: the school, names and partners below are invented. Swap in your own details, keep the four headings (curriculum music, co-curricular music, musical experiences, in the future), and write for parents: plain language, concrete times and costs, and what pupils actually get.

Music development plan summary: Oakfield Primary School (example)

Overview

This summary sets out how Oakfield Primary School delivers music education, in line with the . It covers what we offer this year, what we plan for future years, and how we work with Northshire Music Hub. It is written for parents, carers and pupils, and for anyone who wants to know more about music at Oakfield.

Part A: Curriculum music

This is about what we teach in lesson time.

Every class at Oakfield has at least one hour of music each week, made up of a timetabled lesson plus singing in class and assembly. Our curriculum follows the national curriculum for music and is informed by the DfE’s non-statutory Model Music Curriculum.

How music is taught

• Lessons are taught by class teachers, supported by our music lead, using a planned scheme that builds year on year.
• Pupils listen to and talk about a wide range of music, from classical and film music to pop, jazz and music from around the world.
• Singing is part of every lesson, and the whole school sings together in a weekly singing assembly.
• Pupils record and share their work, so they can hear how they have progressed.

Supporting all pupils

Lessons are adapted so that every pupil can take part. This includes adapted instruments and beaters, visual and symbol-supported notation, ear defenders where helpful, and extra adult support. Our music lead works with our SENCo to plan for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Qualifications and awards

Pupils who take instrumental lessons can work towards graded exams through their tutor. Year 4 pupils taking part in whole-class ukulele receive a certificate from Northshire Music Hub at the end of the year.

Part B: Co-curricular music

This is about opportunities for pupils to sing and play music outside of lesson time.

Pupils can sing and play outside lessons in free school ensembles and in paid instrumental lessons, with help available for families who need it.

Help with costs

Pupils eligible for pupil premium, and children looked after, can have instrumental lessons free of charge. Other families facing hardship can apply to Northshire Music Hub’s remissions scheme; our school office can help with this.

Instruments and practice space

Pupils can borrow an instrument from the hub for their first year of lessons. Our music room is available before school and at lunchtime for pupils to rehearse and practise.

Progression beyond Oakfield

We signpost pupils to Northshire Music Hub’s Saturday music centre and area ensembles, so they can keep playing and play with pupils from other schools.

Part C: Musical experiences

This is about all the other musical events and opportunities that we organise.

Every pupil performs at least once a term and sees live music at least once a year, at no cost to families unless shown below.

Every week

• A whole-school singing assembly.
• Live music played as pupils enter and leave assembly, often performed by pupils.
• A “piece of the week” that pupils listen to and talk about in class.

In the future

This is about what the school is planning for subsequent years.

Over the next two years we will widen the range of instruments pupils can learn and give more pupils the chance to keep playing after Year 4.

We will review these plans with pupils, parents and the hub each summer, and update this summary before the start of each academic year.

Further information (optional)

To find out more about music at Oakfield, contact our music lead, Mrs J. Patel, through the school office. Northshire Music Hub’s website lists instrumental lessons, area ensembles and its local plan for music education, and explains how to apply for help with costs.

Tips for writing your own Music Development Plan

The national plan sets out seven features of high-quality school music. Readers of your summary will look for them, so make sure each one is easy to find. Here is where this example covers each.

Common gaps to avoid

• Leaving the DfE’s guidance text in the published page. The template asks you to delete it before publishing.
• Saying “opportunities are offered where appropriate” instead of naming the club, day and cost.
• Leaving out costs and the help available. Parents want to know what they will pay.
• Forgetting the review date, then not updating the summary before the new academic year.
• Not saying how pupils with SEND take part.

Final Note on writing your Music Development Plan

This post is just an example to use as you wish, please double check all information and that the requirements requested by the DfE are all met.

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For many families, your school website is the first place they meet your school. It’s where parents check term dates, read the latest newsletter, find the uniform policy and decide whether to book a visit. Governors use it, staff point people to it, and prospective families judge you by it.

But a front door is only welcoming if everyone can get through it. If a parent with low vision can’t read the text, or a grandparent struggles with a busy page, or a pupil with dyslexia finds the letters swimming, then your website has quietly shut them out. They may never tell you. They simply leave.

That’s what web accessibility is about: making sure everyone can use your website comfortably, whatever their needs.

Who accessibility helps (it’s more people than you think)

Around one in four adults in the UK has a disability, and around one in ten people has dyslexia. Many more have needs that never appear on a form:

• People with sight loss or low vision, who need bigger text or stronger contrast.
• People with dyslexia or other reading differences, who find some fonts and tightly packed text hard to follow.
• People who are colour blind or sensitive to bright colours, for whom a softer or calmer page makes all the difference.
• People with ADHD, autism or a sensory sensitivity, who can find moving carousels and animations distracting or even distressing.
• People who use a keyboard instead of a mouse, who need to see clearly where they are on the page.
• Everyone else, some of the time. A parent reading on a phone in bright sunshine, a governor who has left their reading glasses at home, or a tired member of staff at the end of a long day.

There’s a legal side too. Under the Equality Act 2010, schools have a duty to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people aren’t put at a disadvantage, and that includes the information you share online. But the best reason is the simplest one: a school that values every child and every family should have a website that works for every child and every family.

How Smart Accessibility helps

Every visitor is different, so no single design will suit everyone. Smart Accessibility solves that by letting each visitor adjust your website to suit them.

Once it’s switched on, a small accessibility tab appears on the left hand edge of every page. Click it and a panel opens with a set of simple options:

• Text size: make text anywhere from 80% to 200% of its normal size.
• Colour modes: choose high contrast (see image below), negative contrast or a light background, whichever is most comfortable to read.
• Greyscale: remove colour from the page, which can help people who find bright colours overwhelming.
• Underline links: make every link stand out clearly from the surrounding text.
• Readable font: switch to a plain, wide font that many people with dyslexia find easier to read.
• Text spacing: add more space between lines, words and letters, in line with the spacing recommended in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
• Stop animations: pause movement on the page, including autoplaying videos and image carousels.
• Highlight focus: add a thick yellow outline to whatever is selected, so keyboard users can always see where they are.
• Reset all: return everything to normal with one click.

Visitors can mix and match these to find what works for them. Their choices are remembered in their own browser, so they carry over as they move from page to page and are still there next time they visit on the same device. Nothing is stored on your school’s server, and visitors don’t need to sign in or create an account.

For your school, it means a more welcoming website with no extra work for staff. You don’t need to rewrite pages or create special versions of your content. Visitors simply shape the site to suit their needs.

Turning it on for your school

Smart Accessibility is off until you choose to switch it on, and it takes three quick steps:

1. Go to Smart Plugins in the menu on the left, find the Smart Accessibility card and click On.
2. Click the red Save changes button at the bottom right of the page.
3. Open any page of your website. You’ll see a square button with a person symbol on the left edge, in your school’s brand colour.

There are no settings to configure, because each visitor picks the tools they need.

One thing to remember: the toolbar helps visitors who find your website hard to read, but it doesn’t make your website accessible on its own. Clear headings, descriptive link text, alt text on images and an up-to-date accessibility statement all still matter.

Our help guide walks you through it step by step: .

A small change that opens the door wider

Accessibility isn’t a box to tick. It’s about making sure every parent, pupil, governor and member of your community can find what they need on your website, in a way that works for them. Smart Accessibility is a simple, practical step towards that, and it takes only a moment to switch on.

If you have any questions, our support team is always happy to help.

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At Realsmart, we’ve built something different. Our school MIS Sync tool is already widely considered the best in the market because it doesn’t just move data, it gives you a high-level web interface to control exactly how your data is shaped, managed and delivered.

One tool for every platform

Most schools struggle with fragmented basic systems. They need to manage users in Google for learning, Active Directory for local networks, and r for iPads. Our tool is the ultimate “multi-sync” solution, taking data from your MIS and seamlessly provisioning it across the entire tech stack:

• Google Workspace for Education: Automate everything from user creation to Classroom management.
• Active Directory (AD): Say goodbye to manual provisioning; we sync MIS data directly to your AD instance, automating OUs and account movements.
• Microsoft Entra: Keep your Microsoft identity management in perfect sync with your MIS records.
• Apple School Manager: Automatically provision staff and students and create Apple Classroom classes with a few clicks.

Solving Real School Problems

We don’t just provide a school MIS sync; we provide a way to make teaching and learning smoother. Our “Smartadmin” dashboard allows trust and school admins to solve immediate problems that standard sync tools ignore:

• Classroom Automation: No more class codes; Classrooms are automatically created and updated based on MIS teaching groups.
• Timetable Integration: Sync staff and student timetables directly to Google Calendars, including room details.
• Empowering Teachers: Any teacher can reset student passwords instantly, preventing technical hiccups from derailing a lesson.
• Security & Identity: Set custom password policies and upload MIS photos to Google Profiles for a professional, secure environment.

A big update is coming to our school MIS sync tool

While we are proud of being the “best-in-market” solution, we aren’t standing still. We are constantly evolving our product based on the bespoke requirements of our schools.

We are excited to announce that a major update is coming soon. This update is designed to make the sync even more powerful, providing deeper flexibility and even more control for Multi-Academy Trusts managing dozens of schools from a single dashboard.

Take a sneak peek below at some of the screenshots coming directly from our team of developers.

Just to highlight some of the new features we have built into the new version of smartAdmin:

• A more powerful Dashboard: All of the important features straight to your fingertips, New and suspended users displayed, instant suspend actions. Actions that allow you to sync now to all or single services.
• End of Year Management: An area to manage all of the end of year processes, this includes sync postponement date, resume date and a step by step guide on performing an end of year tidy up
• Wonde data interrogation: take a closer look at all of the Wonde data that is coming directly from the MIS to help troubleshoot missing users or identify what is available. 
• Advanced Features: Create your own API connections into realsmart and use your own data how you please. Build your own apps that access your own data, with the help of realsmart. 
• Merge Users: Got a returning user? Need to merge a newly created account with an older one? We’ve got the tool for you. 

This is just a small selection of what is coming but we think you will agree that it all sounds quite exciting.

A few legacy features

If you’re looking for a web application that allows you to easily manage all of your users, groups and more then Realsmart’s school MIS sync is the engine that makes it happen.

Stay tuned over the summer for more news on how the most powerful sync tool on the market is about to get even better.

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Realsmart school websites are built with integrations at their core. Our Single sign-on (SSO) capability is proof of that. In addition, our smartOptions area makes it incredibly easy to connect with key platforms like Studybugs and MyNewTerm. These platforms have seen great uptake recently.

MyNewTerm: Effortless Recruitment

Recruitment is a critical function for every school and trust. offers a powerful platform to manage school job vacancies, applications, and applicant communications.

Integrating with a school website ensures that your “Vacancies” or “Work with Us” page is always up-to-date. This seamless link allows prospective staff to view and apply for roles directly. Consequently, your recruitment drive is as efficient as possible.

With ever increasing budget pressures, schools are still faced all too regularly with spending a fortune to advertise vacancies and recruit staff. In today’s digital world, why then do we make it so difficult for candidates to apply directly? – Founder of MyNewTerm Wayne Cartmel 

To implement myNewTerm on a realsmart website all you need to do is paste two simple lines of code in place and you are ready to go!

Where this application really excels is when you use it on your multi-academy trust website, display the vacancies all across the trust in one single place, with a filterable interface you now have one port of call for all the schools in the trust.

Studybugs: Simplify Absence Reporting

is an efficient service that makes it simple for parents to report their child’s absence. This significantly reduces the administrative burden on school staff.

With on of our websites, integrating is a smooth, quick process. This means parents can navigate from your school website straight to the Studybugs portal, providing a streamlined and straightforward experience.

The advantage of schools using a service such as study bugs is that the school can analyse all of the data. This then allows early intervention.

Never miss a warning sign again. Studybugs automatically highlights and alerts you to attendance and wellbeing concerns so you can act faster. – Studybugs

There’s more

Our websites extend far beyond just these two services. Whether you need to integrate store functionality such as Shopify or a virtual learning environment (VLE) using our user roles and redirect ability, our website architecture is designed to accommodate various third-party platforms. For example, you might want to install . In any case, our aim is to make your life easier! We are a partner not a barrier.

If you need any help adding a third party service onto your school website then just drop us an email to support@realsmart.co.uk

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Here is a step by step guide and a list of crucial points to be aware of during the transition.

The Transition Process: A Step by Step Approach

1. Initial Assessment and Planning

Before engaging a new provider, thoroughly assess your current website’s performance, what you like and dislike, and what features you want to see in the new website.

• Define Your Goals: What do you want the new website to achieve? (e.g., better communication, increased enrollment inquiries, improved accessibility).
• Establish Key Stakeholders: Identify who needs to be involved in the decision making and content creation process (e.g., Headteacher, Governors, IT lead, administrative staff).
• Set a Realistic Timeline: Work backward from your desired launch date or end of current contract, allocating time for planning, content migration, design iteration, and testing.

2. Provider Selection

Research and select a provider that specializes in school websites and understands the unique requirements of the education sector. Take advantage of bespoke functionality that is aimed at schools. 

• Review Portfolios: Look at examples of other schools they have worked with.
• Request a Demo: Ensure the Content Management System (CMS) is intuitive and easy for staff to use.
• Check Support and Training: Understand what support is offered post launch and whether there are any additional costs. We have no additional costs for support or training.
• Planning for the future: Investigate how easy it is to change providers in the future, can you export your content and how easy is it to work with?

3. Design and Branding

The new website is the perfect opportunity to implement any new brand guidelines or simply give your school a visual refresh. Whether you decide to change the font you use, tweak your brand colours or even change your logo, this is the ideal stage to implement change. 

• Apply New Brand Guidelines: Ensure your new website accurately reflects your school’s ethos, colors, and logo.
• Focus on User Experience (UX): Prioritize clear navigation and mobile responsiveness. Most users will access your site on a phone or tablet.

4. Content Strategy and Creation

This is the most time consuming step but is essential for a successful launch.

• Start Fresh with Content: Resist the urge to simply copy and paste old, outdated material. Use this as a chance to audit, update, and rewrite content to be concise, engaging, and relevant.
• Identify Mandatory Content: Ensure all legally required documents and information are accounted for. We have a handy to ensure your school website is DFE compliant.

5. Development and Testing

The provider will build the site, but your input and rigorous testing are vital before launch.

• Regular Check-ins: Maintain open communication with the provider throughout the build process. Be open with them if you feel like a tweak is needed to the design. 
• Thorough Testing: Test on multiple devices (desktop, tablet, mobile) and browsers. Check all links, forms, and interactive elements.

6. Launch and Post Launch

Plan the migration of your domain name and be ready for immediate feedback.

• Domain Migration: Work with your IT team and the new provider to ensure a seamless switch, minimizing downtime.
• Staff Training: Ensure all relevant staff are trained on how to update and manage the new CMS.

Key Points to Be Aware Of

*For a full list of required content, please refer to the latest DfE guidelines available here:

Conclusion

This transition, while requiring effort, is an excellent investment in your school’s future, ensuring a modern, compliant, and effective digital platform for the entire school community. If you are interested in changing your school website provider to realsmart then just drop us an email, we look forward to partnering with you.

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Why wordpress?

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) for a reason. It is flexible, scalable, and incredibly user friendly. It powers the majority of the wordwide web which in turn means it is vastly supported by a worldwide community and a wealth of knowledge.

The realsmart offering

While WordPress provides the engine, we at realsmart offer a tailored environment specifically designed for Schools and MATs. Integrating WordPress through a service like ourselves brings a suite of specialised advantages:

1. Enhanced Security and Compliance

We provide dedicated hosting and security features that are essential for protecting sensitive school and student data. This ensures your website meets the necessary regulatory standards and gives you peace of mind. Leveraging the power of tools such as AWS and Cloudflare we work with industry leading technology to give you the very best service.

2. Education-Specific Tools

With realsmart, the WordPress installation is often pre-configured or bundled with plugins and features crucial for schools, such as:

• MIS Integration: We can sync your users from your schools MIS into realsmart to allow users to log into your school website to manage their content. Alternatively we can generate a list of logins for cases where only a handfull of accounts with access are required.
• Calendar and Event Management: Easy publishing of term dates, school trips, and meetings. We can intergrate with feeds from multiple sources of calendar, from Google Calendar to Microsoft Outlook calendars and more.
• Bespoke Theme Options: Themes designed to meet the communication and aesthetic needs of a school environment. Easy to update main carousels, areas to add anayltics tracking and out of the box responsiveness.
• School Specific Plugins: We have developed a long list of plugins designed to make managing your school website easier. From policy management, job vacancies, carousels, popups and more we have plenty of solutions for you to take advanatge of.
• Multisite Functionality: Our multisite functionality makes it easy for you to manage content such as policies, menu links and news posts from one location such as the Trust website and then push this content across multiple other school websites.

3. Dedicated Support

When an issue arises, you won’t be navigating the generic WordPress forums alone. We offer dedicated, UK-based support that understands the specific needs of a school. If you need assistance, simply drop our support team an email, or find the support guide on our .

The best bit? We have no hidden costs, our support service is all part of the package. We’ve heard some fo the horror stories where schools have been charged for a simple colour change or some assistance formatting content.

4. Simplified Management

We handle the technical heavy lifting such as: updates, backups, and maintenance, allowing school staff to focus entirely on content creation and communication. We backup sites every night and store these backups on a 30 day rolling service giving you peace of mind.

Need more Information?

If there is anythin else you need to know about our offering for school websites with WordPress then just drop us a call or have a browse through all of our products. We try to post regular blog posts that will often include any new features we’ve developed or useful information to make your school life easier.

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Absolute Hyperlinks: The FULL Address

An absolute hyperlink is the complete, full URL to a destination. Think of it as a street address that includes the recipient’s name, street number, city, state, and post code. It contains all the information needed for a browser to locate the resource, regardless of where the current page is located. Here is an example of an absolute hyperlink – /school-websites/primary-school-websites/

Key Characteristics of an Absolute Hyperlink:

• It includes the protocol: It must start with http:// or https://.
• It includes the domain name: It specifies the website’s address (e.g., www.realsmart.co.uk).
• It works anywhere: It can be used to link to any resource on the internet, including a different website entirely. 

Attention! If you are linking to your website’s main page from an external site, you must use an absolute URL, for example: https://www.realsmart.co.uk/

When to Use Absolute Hyperlinks:

• Linking to external websites.
• Including links in emails (since you don’t know where the email will be opened).
• Referring to files that will be consumed outside of your website’s structure, such as in a PDF document.

Relative Hyperlinks: The Shortcut

A relative hyperlink provides a path to a resource relative to the current page. It’s like giving directions to a friend that start with “From where you are right now…” It only includes the parts of the URL that are different from the current page’s URL. The browser automatically assumes the current domain name. In our example, instead of applying a link using – /school-websites/primary-school-websites/ We would only use /school-websites/primary-school-websites/ 

Key Characteristics of a Relative Hyperlink:

• It does not include the domain name, it is assumed by the browser.
• It only works within the same website.

Consider the following examples of relative paths using as an example:

This link is using /school-websites/primary-school-websites/ and will take you to our primary school websites page.

This link is using /microsoft-active-directory-sync/ and will take you to our Microsoft sync page. 

When to Use Relative Hyperlinks:

• Linking between pages on the same website. This is the primary use case.
• Making your website more portable. If you move your entire site to a new domain name, all relative links will still work without modification, whereas absolute links would need to be updated. We see this more and more commonly with schools now joining trusts etc and their domain name will change. 

Comparison Chart

Choosing between absolute and relative links is usually straightforward once you know the destination. Below is a brief comparison:

Summary

As you can see there are use cases for both types of hyperlink but it is worth knowing the difference. Now that schools change domains a lot more frequently than in the past it is worth knowing about and implementing relative hyperlinks. Using these across your website will save you a lot of time and headache if your school ever changes its domain name, which in present day with schools joining trust, trusts merging etc is more common than ever.

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Why a Dedicated Vacancies Plugin?

In today’s competitive landscape, presenting job opportunities clearly and professionally is crucial. Our new plugin seamlessly integrates with your existing school website, providing a dedicated, user-friendly portal for listing and managing your school’s vacancies.

Key Benefits of the realsmart Vacancies Plugin:

• Seamless Integration: The plugin is designed to blend effortlessly with your current website’s look and feel, maintaining brand consistency.
• Easy to Use: Both for your website administrators and for prospective applicants, the plugin offers an intuitive experience. You don’t need to be a tech expert to set up and manage your listings.
• Centralized Management: Keep all your job postings in one place, making it simple to update, remove, and track applications.
• Professional Presentation: Showcase your school as an attractive employer with well-organized and easily accessible job listings.

How It Works: Simple and Intuitive

We’ve made sure the process of adding and managing vacancies is incredibly straightforward. From creating a new job posting to categorizing it and adding application details, every step is designed for simplicity.

To help you get started immediately and make the most of this powerful new tool, we’ve created a comprehensive help guide. This guide walks you through every aspect of the plugin, ensuring you can harness its full potential without any hassle.

Ready to revolutionize your school’s recruitment process? Check out our detailed help guides here:

We’re confident that the realsmart Vacancies Plugin will be an invaluable asset to your school, helping you find the perfect candidates for your team with ease. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

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Getting your website seen by search engines (like Google) can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. This is where a sitemap comes in – it’s a super important, though often an overlooked part of managing your website. Think of a sitemap not just as a technical detail, but as a detailed map for your website. It guides those search engine “robots” (called crawlers) and helps them understand what your website is all about and how it’s organised therefore making it easier to present in a results page.

What is a Sitemap?

Simply put, a sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website that you want search engines to find and include in their search results. Imagine it like the table of contents for a really big book, but for your entire website! There are two main types:

• XML Sitemaps: These are specifically made for search engines. They’re written in a special code (XML) and tell search engines extra details about each page, such as when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is compared to other pages on your site.
• HTML Sitemaps: These are lists of links that people can read and use. While not as crucial for search engine optimisation (SEO) as they once were, an HTML sitemap can still be helpful for visitors trying to navigate very large or complicated websites.

What are the benefits of having a sitemap?

1. Helps Search Engines Find and Understand Your Pages

This is probably the biggest reason to have a sitemap. Search engine bots explore the internet by following links from one page to another. Even though they’re incredibly smart, they can sometimes miss pages – especially on brand-new websites, sites with confusing layouts, or pages that are buried deep within your site. A sitemap clearly tells search engines: “Hey, here are all the pages I want you to know about!”

2. Gives Visibility to “Lost” Pages

“Orphan pages” are pages on your website that don’t have any links pointing to them from other pages on your site. Without these internal links, search engine crawlers would never be able to discover these pages. A sitemap gives search engines a direct way to find and index these otherwise isolated bits of content, making sure no valuable information goes unseen.

3. Improves Your Website’s Search Engine Ranking

By helping search engines find and understand your pages better, sitemaps directly boost your SEO efforts. Indexed pages mean more chances to rank for the right search terms, which leads to more people finding your website through search engines. It’s a basic but essential part of making your website technically sound for SEO.

How to Create and Submit a Sitemap?

Most modern website builders and content management systems such as WordPress (this is what we use!) have plugins (like Yoast SEO or XML Sitemap Generator for Google) that automatically create and update XML sitemaps for you. Realsmart have the plugin XML Sitemap Generator available to use in your plugin library. All you need to do is activate the plugin and the settings page will present you with the URL for your sitemap, it really is simple!

Once you have your sitemap URL, you’ll need to tell search engines about it using their special tools:

• Google Search Console: This is the main place to submit your sitemap to Google. on uploading a new sitemap!
• Bing Webmaster Tools: For submitting your sitemap to Bing.

Make sure to regularly check your sitemap in these tools for any errors, ensuring that search engines can easily access and process it.

We hope this post helps you to go out there and create a sitemap for your school website!

Team realsmart

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Firstly we hope you are all well rested and refreshed after a nice summer break. Getting back into the stride of things can take more than a few coffees but we are here to help take the strain of managing any of the digital services you may use via realsmart. Don’t forget that our amazing support team are only an email away via support@realsmart.co.uk to assist if you need help.

What’s new?

Over the summer months we’ve been working to refine our existing products but we have also added a handful of new offerings that you may look to implement, these include:

• Apple Sync tool: We have developed a tool that will allow you to sync your MIS data into Apple School Manager, allowing the provision of Users, Courses and Rosters across to all of your Apple Devices. We’ve developed a user friendly interface to take you though this process step by step. Check out more information on our Apple Sync Page and keep an eye out for more features.
• Active Directory Sync: Our AD Sync tool is now out of beta and being used by a number of schools. We pull users from your MIS and then send this data to Active Directory to create users, groups and organisational units. A sleek interface and the ability to schedule when the task is run helps you save time and effort in user management.
• Microsoft Entra Sync: The final piece of the puzzle. Taking the MIS data and provisioning it to Microsoft, still in the early stages but our aim is to offer a product that mirrors what we currently provide for Google. Drop us an email if this is a service you would be interested in using.

What else do we offer?

We know there are a fair few of you that make use of our full suite of tools but there are also plenty that maybe only use a single service we offer. Why spread your solutions out via multiple providers when realsmart can offer you multiple solutions in a single package?

Here is a quick reminder of what we offer:

• School websites: We offer bespoke professional website design solutions for schools & Multi-Academy Trusts, have a look at some of our recent work. Our websites are easy to manage and come with a suite of plugins that focus on school specific actions such as displaying events, managing policies and loads more.
• MIS to Google Sync: Our google sync is the most advanced on the market. Taking all of your MIS data and provisioning it to Google. We provide a sync that provisions users, groups, timetables, classrooms and more. Our simple interface provides easy management and the ability to look into each module and customise your experience.
• Google Workspace upgrades: As a trusted Google partner and reseller we are able to provide you with upgrades to your Google Workspace for Education licenses, these are available in 3 tiers starting with Free access. Interested in the use of Google Gemini? Get in touch with us.
• Chromebook QR Code login: Sometimes passwords just don’t cut it, especially with younger users and in classroom situations. Our QR code login solution offers a simply and effective way to get your students logged in fast and efficiently.

Help and advice

As well as our friendly support, developer and design teams we have a useful library of articles that can walk you through some of the day to day issues that crop up now and again. Our is the first place to stop if you need a quick refresh on editing your website, managing a use issue or trying to implement a new solution within your school.

We are always open to suggestions on ways to improve our products and new features you would find useful. We work with you as a partnership so don’t hesitate to reach out.

Keeping it real!

Team realsmart

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