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.

The post Publishing a Music Development Plan on your school website appeared first on realsmart.

Everything here is already on your website. Some features are off until you switch them on, so we have said how for each one. They are all free, as every update is with Realsmart.

A new menu for phones, on every school website

Most parents visit on a phone, and every one of them uses the menu. We have redesigned it for all of our schools. Search now comes first, the rows are bigger and easier to tap, submenus open in place, and the page you are on is clearly marked. The close button is always in reach. It takes its colours from your own website, so it looks like yours from day one. There is nothing to switch on.

Calendars you can page through

Smart WP Calendar can now show your events as a calendar, not just a list. Visitors can move through it by week, month or year, and the year view can start in September so it follows the school year. Use the Copy calendar view shortcode button in Calendar Options and paste it onto any page. Existing calendar pages stay exactly as they are.

FAQs you can edit, and a chat that answers from them

Smart FAQ now has one home under Smart Plugins → Smart FAQ, with tabs for your settings, your questions and their categories. When a visitor asks the FAQ chat something you have already answered, it gives them your written answer, word for word, before it searches the rest of your website.

Policies, laid out your way

Smart Policy Manager can now import the PDFs from an existing policies page in one go, so moving to it takes minutes rather than an afternoon. Each group of policies can be shown as a list, a grid, a table, simple links, an accordion, or a magazine-style flipbook, with your own colours.

Posts that take themselves down

Turn on Smart Post Expiry in Smart Plugins and every post gets a date and time to unpublish it. That is useful for a trip reminder, a one-off closure notice or a job advert. When the time comes the post goes back to draft. Nothing is deleted, and you can publish it again whenever you like.

Know when a post is waiting for review

If staff write posts that a senior leader approves, turn on Smart Approvals. Reviewers get an email when a post is submitted, and the author hears back when it is published.

A plain-English reading age

Parents read your website at every level, and many read it in a second language. Beside the editor you will now see a reading age in UK years for the page you are writing. It updates as you type, so you can see straight away when a sentence has got too long. Your Compliance screen shows the reading age of your pages and documents too.

Smaller things you might notice

• The Realsmart bar in your dashboard. If you sign in through Realsmart, the bar you know from your website now sits at the top of the dashboard as well, so you can move between your apps without leaving it.
• One look for our settings screens. Every Realsmart settings screen now has the same tidy layout, so they are easier to find your way around.
• Smart Lock. Lock your homepage so it cannot be changed by accident. Realsmart support can still open it when you ask us to help.

We have also written separate posts on three bigger changes: your vacancies on Google Jobs, bigger uploads and iPhone photos and a cookie banner that really asks. Beyond your website, there is news on safer sign-in, with 2FA for every admin and what is new in Realsmart Sync and ADAdmin. And if you want to know what is coming, read what we are working on next.

Want any of this switched on?

You can turn most features on yourself under Smart Plugins in your dashboard. If you would rather we did it, or you would like a hand setting something up, email support@realsmart.co.uk.

The post What’s new on your Realsmart website: October 2026 appeared first on realsmart.

Trust Hub: one place to run a trust’s websites

Trust leaders have told us the same thing again and again. They are responsible for a dozen school websites, and checking them means opening a dozen tabs.

Trust Hub is a new area on a trust’s own website, for the people who look after the whole trust. It is already running with our first pilot trust, where it lists every school in the trust with its website compliance score, so leaders can see at a glance which schools need attention.

Over the coming months we are adding:

• A trust overview that brings together compliance, recent activity and anything that needs a decision.
• A board-ready report you can take to trustees.
• A weekly summary email on Monday morning.
• Publishing to every school from one place: news, policies and announcements written once by the trust and shared to its schools, with each school able to approve them first.

Ofsted alerts for the trust, not just the school

Our website compliance check can already tell a school when a visit to its website looks like an Ofsted review. Soon the trust can be told too. In Trust Hub, trust leaders will choose who should receive these alerts, so the central team hears at the same time as the school.

Smart Writer: an AI writing assistant built for schools

Smart Writer sits in the page and post editors and helps staff write. It can draft a post from a few notes, rewrite something for parents, shorten a long letter, or suggest alt text for an image. It was built around a few rules that matter in schools:

• It writes in British English: mum, colour, organise.
• It never makes up facts. When it needs a date, a time or a name it does not have, it leaves a clear marker for you to fill in.
• It follows your school’s style: the words you use, the words you avoid, and how you sign off letters.
• You stay in charge. Nothing is published until you choose to publish it.

Smart Writer will be off unless a school chooses to switch it on. We will share more, including how to try it, very soon.

The biggest Smart Parents update yet

The next update to the Smart Parents app brings school news in each parent’s own language, School Story with photo consent built in, and conversations on notices. Read what is coming to Smart Parents.

Tell us what you need

Much of what is on this list came from conversations with schools and trusts. If there is something your website should do and does not, we would love to hear it. Email support@realsmart.co.uk, or ask at your next check-in.

The post What we’re working on next: autumn 2026 appeared first on realsmart.

That is a promise we take seriously, so this term we changed how we test.

Rehearsed on real schools before it reaches yours

An update can pass every automated test and still trip over something on one school’s website: a setting, an old table, a layout built years ago. The only reliable way to find those is to try the update on real websites first.

So now, before any WordPress or plugin update goes live, we:

1. find every school website that uses the plugins being updated;
2. take private copies of a spread of those websites, chosen so that every updated plugin is covered;
3. run the update on those copies exactly as it will run on the live websites;
4. open the pages that use each plugin, and the dashboard, and check for any error.

If anything fails, the update does not go out. Our release tools refuse it until the problem is fixed and the rehearsal passes.

Updates at sensible times

Live updates now go out only in a fixed window during the school day, when our whole team is on hand to keep an eye on it. Updates also no longer clear every school’s saved pages at once, so your website stays quick straight after a release.

Faster pages

We keep a ready-made copy of your pages so visitors do not wait for each one to be built. We now store those copies compressed, which means we can keep far more of them ready, and more of your visitors get a page that loads instantly.

Safer for the people building your website

Our designers build new school websites on a separate test server. Updates to that server used to interrupt their work for a few minutes. They now switch over in an instant, with the previous version kept ready in case it is ever needed.

And a security review of our own plugins

We also carried out a full review of the plugins we write ourselves, fixed the issues it found, and removed code that was no longer used. Fewer moving parts means fewer things that can go wrong.

None of this needs anything from you. If you ever do spot something that is not right after an update, email support@realsmart.co.uk and we will be on it.

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Why it matters

In the UK, a website has to ask before it sets cookies for analytics or advertising, and saying no has to be as easy as saying yes. A banner with a single “Got it!” button does not do that, especially when the tracking code has already run before the visitor has read it.

That matters more for schools than most. Your visitors include children, and families expect their school to look after their information.

What visitors see now

With Smart Cookies switched on, visitors get three clear options:

• Accept all and Reject all, side by side and the same size, so neither is the “easy” one.
• Manage preferences, to choose analytics and marketing cookies separately. Both start switched off.

Afterwards, a small Cookie settings button lets them change their mind at any time. If they take their consent back, the tracking cookies are cleared.

Tracking waits until they say yes

This is the important part. Any analytics or advertising code you have added to your website, such as Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity or a Meta Pixel for admissions adverts, now waits until the visitor agrees. If they reject, it never runs.

The Learn more link on the banner now goes to your own school’s privacy notice, not a generic page.

How to switch it on

1. In your dashboard, go to Smart Plugins and switch on Smart Cookies.
2. Check that your privacy notice page is published and says which tools you use.
3. Visit your website in a private browser window and try Accept, Reject and Manage preferences.

This is not legal advice, and your data protection officer has the final say on your school’s approach. If you are unsure which tools your website is using, email support@realsmart.co.uk and we will tell you.

The post A cookie banner that really asks appeared first on realsmart.

Files up to 500 MB

The largest file you could upload used to be about 50 MB. That ruled out most videos and plenty of prospectuses. You can now upload files of up to 500 MB, such as videos, large PDFs and slide decks, straight from the Media Library. Big files are sent in small pieces behind the scenes, which makes large uploads much more reliable.

iPhone photos just work

iPhones save photos in a format called HEIC, which most web browsers cannot show. Until now, a photo uploaded straight from an iPhone could look fine on your Mac and broken for every parent on Chrome or Windows.

Now, when you choose a HEIC photo, your browser turns it into an ordinary JPEG before it is uploaded. You will see a short “Converting…” message, and then it uploads like any other photo. Very large photos are scaled down to a sensible size on the way.

We have also made uploading lots of photos at once more reliable. Drop in a whole set from a school trip and they should all arrive.

Replace a file everywhere at once

When a policy or a letter is updated, you no longer need to upload the new one and then hunt down every page that links to the old one. Open the file in the Media Library and choose Replace Media. Every page that uses it shows the new version straight away, at the same address.

Crops and rotations show up straight away

If you have ever cropped a photo in the Media Library and wondered why visitors still saw the old one, that is fixed. When you crop, rotate or resize an image, visitors now see the edited version as soon as you save it.

Anything to do?

No. All of this is already on your website. If an older image still looks wrong after you have edited it, use Replace Media to upload it again, or email support@realsmart.co.uk and we will take a look.

The post Bigger uploads, iPhone photos, and image edits that stick appeared first on realsmart.

They can now.

What has changed

When you add a vacancy with Staff Vacancies, it gets its own page on your website, as it always has. That page now also carries a short, hidden description written the way Google asks for it: the job title, the description and how to apply, the date it opened, the closing date, and where the job is.

Google reads that description and can list the job in its job search, with your school as the employer.

• Only open vacancies are listed. When the closing date passes, the description comes off the page, so Google stops showing a job you have already filled.
• The location is your school’s. We take your address from your website’s settings. If that is missing, we use your school’s entry in the DfE’s records, so the job appears in searches near you.
• Nothing to switch on. It works for every school that uses Staff Vacancies, including vacancies you have already posted.

Search engines can now find your whole website

While we were working on this, we found that search engines were not being told where to find each school’s sitemap, the list of every page on your website. Every school website now names its own sitemap, so Google and others can find new pages, news and vacancies sooner.

Getting the best from it

Google decides what to show, and it can take a few days for a new vacancy to appear. You can help it along:

• Fill in the closing date. Google gives jobs with a clear deadline more weight, and it means the listing comes down on time.
• Write the description as you would for a candidate. Say what the role is, the hours and contract, and what makes your school a good place to work. That text is what candidates read in Google.
• Check your address. If your website still shows a placeholder address, let us know and we will put it right.

Questions? Email support@realsmart.co.uk.

The post Your staff vacancies, now ready for Google Jobs appeared first on realsmart.

Our website compliance check has always looked for the pages and documents the DfE says you must publish. Over the last fortnight we have taught it to do something far more useful: read them.

It reads the documents themselves

Your policies live in all sorts of places: PDFs on a policies page, a Google Drive folder, a OneDrive list shared by your trust, a Word file behind a link that only says “click here”. The check now opens each one, as any parent could, and reads the text inside.

That means it can tell you more than “there is a behaviour policy”. It can tell you that your admissions arrangements give a published admission number of 30, that your PE and sport premium report includes the Year 6 swimming figures, that your SEN information report names your SENCO, and exactly which document each of those came from, with the words around it.

It spots what has gone out of date

Some documents have a deadline every year. The check knows them: the pupil premium strategy statement, the PE and sport premium report, your admission arrangements, the SEN information report. When the one on your website covers last year, you see which year it covers and the date the new one was due.

It catches what is quietly wrong

Two things come up again and again:

• An Ofsted link that points at the school as it was before it converted. The new school has a new URN and a new Ofsted page; plenty of websites still link to the old one.
• A trust the school has left, still named on its website. A sentence on the policies page, a line in the curriculum overview, the admissions authority in the admissions policy. We list every place we find it, and any link to the old trust’s website.

It tells you when someone may be checking

Before an inspection, inspectors look at a school’s website. Our Ofsted visit monitor watches for visits that read like that review: someone working through safeguarding, SEND, pupil premium, governance and your policies in one sitting. When a visit looks like that, it is checked again by AI, and if it still looks likely, we email the contacts you have given us.

It cannot know who is visiting, and it does not pretend to. It simply means a review of your website never comes as a surprise.

What you need to do

Nothing. If your school’s website is with Realsmart, all of this is already running: open Website compliance in your dashboard to see where you stand. If you are part of a trust, your trust’s website shows every school’s score in one place (see MAT features), and that view is rolling out to trusts this term.

The content still has to come from you. What has changed is that you will always know where you stand, long before anyone else looks.

Not with Realsmart yet? �鶹ӳ�� a free demo and we will show you your own school’s website through the same check.

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We’ve built two things to take that scramble out of it.

Move between your trust’s websites from the bar

The Realsmart bar now has a School Switcher. Trust and school staff with admin access can move between their trust’s websites from the bar on any of them. The list only shows the schools you can actually sign in to, the trust’s own website comes first, and the site you’re on is ticked. If you’re an admin at a member school, you’ll see your own school and the trust website.

See compliance for every school at a glance

On the trust’s own website, trust admins also get a summary at the top of the switcher: how many requirements are met across all your schools, how many of the legal must-haves are covered, and how many schools are not scanned or out of date. Each school has its own score chip, and the trust website’s score is shown separately, because trusts have their own set of requirements. Select a chip and you go straight to that school’s Website compliance page to see what needs doing.

The School Switcher on a trust’s website, with a compliance summary and a score for each school. Fictional schools and illustrative scores.

Where the scores come from

They come from Website compliance, which already runs for each school. It works out the school’s type from the DfE’s own records, checks the site every night against the DfE’s ‘what to publish online’ requirements for that type, flags documents that are out of date, and lets you start a missing page from a template. The summary brings those results together in one place.

It doesn’t write your policies for you, and a strong score isn’t a promise about an inspection. What it does is show you where to look first.

How to get it

The School Switcher is now on every Realsmart school and trust website. The compliance summary is rolling out to trusts this term, starting with a group of pilot trusts. If you’re already with us, contact support at support@realsmart.co.uk and we’ll tell you whether the compliance summary is switched on for your trust. If you’re not yet, book a free demo and we’ll show you a live trust estate.

To see what trusts have to publish, read our guide to school website compliance. For the rest of what a trust website can do, see our MAT features page.

Questions you might have

Who can see the scores?

Trust admins, on the trust’s own website, and Realsmart’s support team when they are helping your trust. An admin at a member school sees their own school and the trust website, but not the other schools’ scores.

How often do they update?

After the nightly checks, so a change you make today will normally show in tomorrow’s figures.

What does “not scanned” mean?

We don’t have a check result for that school’s website yet, so there is no score to show. It can happen with a school that has only just joined. “Out of date” is different: the school has been checked, but its latest result hasn’t been refreshed recently. If either label sticks around, let support know.

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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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