School Website Compliance: What You Have to Publish
Every maintained school in England has to publish a set list of information on its website, and academies publish a comparable list through their funding agreement. It is long, it changes, and it is one of the first things an inspector looks at. This is the plain English version, split properly between maintained schools and academy trusts.
We build this structure into every website we make, and check it every night, so it stays findable and current.
Checked every night
Every Realsmart school website checks itself against the DfE lists below. Here it is on a fictional school and trust.
Maintained school or academy? The lists are different
This trips up a lot of schools. The DfE publishes two separate pieces of guidance, and a fair amount of what is a legal must for a maintained school reaches an academy through its funding agreement and the Academy Trust Handbook instead. Academy trusts also publish things at trust level that maintained schools never deal with at all.
- Maintained schools:
- Academies and trusts:
What maintained schools must publish
These are the items a maintained school in England is required to publish on its website. Where something only applies to certain schools, that is noted.
| Item | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Admission arrangements | Your arrangements for the normal point of entry, in year procedures and the appeals timetable. Applies to foundation and voluntary aided schools that set their own arrangements. |
| Behaviour policy | Required under the Education and Inspections Act 2006. |
| Careers programme Secondary | The name and contact details of your careers lead, a summary of the programme, how you measure its impact and the review date, plus the provider access policy statement. |
| Charging and remissions | Which activities you charge for and the circumstances in which charges are waived. |
| Complaints policy | Your formal complaints procedure, including the arrangements for handling SEN complaints. |
| Contact details | Postal address, telephone number, the named member of staff who deals with queries, and your SENCO’s details if you are a mainstream school. |
| Curriculum | Content for each subject in each academic year, the right to withdraw from RE, your accessibility plan, your phonics and reading scheme at KS1, and your KS4 course list. |
| Financial information | The number of employees earning over 拢100,000, in bands of 拢10,000, and a link to the schools financial benchmarking service. |
| Governance information | Information about your governing body and its committees, and how its constitution meets the requirements. |
| Ofsted reports | Your most recent report, or a link to it. |
| Pay gap reporting 250+ staff | Gender pay gap information published through the government service within a year of the snapshot date. |
| PE and sport premium | How much you received, how you spent it, the impact on participation and attainment, how you will sustain it, and the percentage of Year 6 who can meet each swimming requirement. |
| Public sector equality duty | How you comply, published annually, plus equality objectives at least every four years. |
| Pupil premium | Your strategy statement, published by 31 December each year, how the money was spent and the outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. |
| SEND information | Your SEN information report, updated annually, admission arrangements for disabled pupils, the steps you take to prevent less favourable treatment, the facilities that improve access, and your accessibility plan. |
| Results | A link to the compare school and college performance service, plus your KS2, KS4 or KS5 measures as they apply to you. |
| Item | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Ethos and values Should | What your school stands for. Not required, but it is usually the thing prospective families read first. |
| Music development plan Should | A summary of your music provision. |
| Detailed governance Should | Structure and remits, full names of chairs and individual governors, appointment dates, attendance records, business interests, and governance diversity data. |
| Remote education Should | What provision looks like if pupils cannot attend in person. |
| School opening hours Should | Start and finish times and the total weekly hours. |
| School uniform Should | The items required, which carry branding, where they can be bought and what is available second hand. |
| Destinations and EBacc Should | Post 16 destinations, EBacc participation and average point scores. |
What academies and academy trusts publish
Academies publish at two levels. The trust publishes a set of items that maintained schools never deal with, and each academy publishes its own list. The trust level items are the ones most often missed.
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Funding agreements | The trust’s agreements with the Secretary of State. |
| Memorandum and articles of association | The trust’s governing documents. |
| Audited annual report and accounts | Published by 31 January each year. |
| Funds summary statement | Multi-academy trusts only: a summary statement published with the accounts by 31 January, showing how funds are distributed across the trust’s schools. New in the 2026 handbook. |
| Executive pay | Details of senior staff pay as set out in the Academy Trust Handbook. |
| Whistleblowing procedures | How concerns can be raised and how they are handled. |
| Gender pay gap 250+ staff | Where the trust employs 250 or more people. |
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Admission arrangements | Published by 15 March each year. |
| Pupil premium strategy | Published by 31 December each year. |
| SEN information report | Updated annually. |
| Careers provider access statement | Required under section 42B of the Education Act 1997. |
| Complaints procedure | Meeting the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014. |
| Relationships and sex education policy | Developed with parental consultation. |
| PE and sport premium | Spend, impact and sustainability, as for maintained schools. |
| Public sector equality duty | Compliance annually and objectives at least every four years. |
| Pay gap reporting 250+ staff | Where the employer has 250 or more staff. |
| Behaviour, charging, curriculum, contact details, ethos, Ofsted, uniform, opening hours, remote education, results Should | The DfE guidance lists these as items academies should publish rather than must, though many are picked up through the funding agreement. |
If you run a trust, our academy trust websites page explains how we handle publishing across a whole estate, so a policy goes up once rather than fifteen times. Trust admins can also see every school’s compliance in one place in Trust Hub, on the trust’s own website, with a board report for trustees, a Monday briefing email and Ofsted website alerts for every school.
The compliance calendar
Four fixed dates catch schools out more than anything else, because they land in the middle of terms when nobody is thinking about the website.
Pupil premium strategy
Your strategy statement for the current year, including how the funding is spent and the outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.
Trust accounts Trusts
The audited annual report and accounts, published on the trust website. Multi-academy trusts also publish a summary statement of how funds are distributed across their schools.
Admission arrangements Academies
Determined admission arrangements for the following year.
SEN report and equality duty
The SEN information report is updated every year, as is your public sector equality duty compliance. Equality objectives run on a four year cycle.
We build the structure in from day one
The usual pattern is that statutory information gets added at the end of a website project, dropped into a single page called Statutory Information, and slowly turns into a wall of PDFs that nobody can navigate.
We plan it in at the design stage instead. Every required item gets its own permanent, properly labelled home in the site structure, so an inspector, a governor or a parent can find it, and so your team knows exactly where each thing goes when it needs updating.
Policies that tell you when they are due
Most compliance failures aren’t about missing pages. They are about a policy that expired eighteen months ago and nobody noticed, or a strategy statement still showing last year’s figures.
Our policy library holds review dates against each document and flags them when they come round, so the problem surfaces before an inspector finds it rather than afterwards. The nightly check below then flags any required document that looks out of date.
We tell you when the guidance moves
The DfE updates this guidance periodically, and the changes rarely make it to anyone in a school office. A requirement gets added and hundreds of school websites fall out of date.
We watch the guidance and tell our schools when something changes, along with what it means for your site. If a new item is needed, we add the structure for it.
We check your website every night
Having a home for every required item is only half of it. Every night, your Realsmart website is checked against the DfE’s ‘what to publish online’ list for your type of school. We work out your type, whether you are a maintained school, an academy or a trust, from the DfE’s own school records, so nobody has to pick the right list or remember to switch it.
The check flags documents that look out of date, and where a required page is missing it can be started from a template. The results sit on your site’s Website compliance page, so you hear about a gap from us rather than from an inspector.
It can’t write your content. The figures, policies and dates still have to come from you, because only your school knows them. What it does is tell you, every night, what is missing or out of date, so you are not finding out the week before an inspection.
For trusts: trust admins, and our support team when they are helping you, can see how every school is doing, with a score for each school and a separate score for the trust website, from the switcher on the trust’s own website. The scores are rolling out to trusts this term.
We read your website the way an inspector would
Every Realsmart website checks itself every night against the DfE requirements for your type of school. It reads your pages and your policies, and tells you plainly what is in place, what is out of date and what is missing.
Knows which list applies
We read your school’s details from the DfE’s own records, so a maintained primary, an academy in a trust and a trust’s own website each get checked against the right requirements.
Reads inside every policy
PDFs, Word files, Google Drive and OneDrive folders: we read the text inside them. A link that only says “click here” still counts, and the checks look inside the document itself.
Shows what it found, and where
Your published admission number, your Year 6 swimming figures, your SENCO’s name: each one is shown with the page or document it came from and the words around it.
Spots what has gone out of date
Last year’s PE and sport premium report, a pupil premium statement past its deadline, a SEN information report more than a year old. You see the date it was due, not just a red cross.
Spots what鈥檚 wrong or out of date
An Ofsted link that still points at the school before it converted, or pages and policies that name a trust the school has since left. Easy to miss, and easy for a parent or inspector to notice.
Helps you put it right
Missing pages start from a template, a statutory information page keeps itself up to date, and reading ages show which pages parents will find hard going.
The content itself still has to come from you. What changes is that you always know where you stand, long before anyone else looks.
What your report looks like
Real screens from a school’s Website compliance report, with the school’s name, staff and figures changed.
Know when someone may be checking your website
Before an inspection, inspectors look at a school’s website. Our monitor watches for visits that read like that review: someone working through safeguarding, SEND, pupil premium, governance and your policies in a single 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 can鈥檛 tell who is visiting, so treat it as an early warning.
Compliance is part of the website
On a Realsmart website the statutory pages are part of the structure from the start, so nobody is rebuilding the list from scratch every time something changes.
- Every required item has its own permanent home
- Split correctly for maintained schools or academy trusts
- Policy review dates flagged before they run out
- Checked every night against the DfE list for your type of school
- We tell you when the DfE guidance changes
School website compliance FAQs
What must a school publish on its website in England?
Maintained schools must publish admission arrangements, behaviour policy, charging and remissions, complaints policy, contact details, curriculum information, financial information, governance information, Ofsted reports, PE and sport premium, public sector equality duty information, pupil premium strategy, SEND information and results. Secondary schools must also publish their careers programme and provider access statement. Academies publish a comparable list through their funding agreement, plus trust level items such as funding agreements and audited accounts.
Is the list different for academies and maintained schools?
Yes, and it matters. The DfE publishes separate guidance for each. Several things that are a legal must for a maintained school reach an academy through its funding agreement and the Academy Trust Handbook instead, and academy trusts publish items at trust level that maintained schools never deal with.
Does Ofsted check the school website?
Inspectors routinely look at a school’s website before and during inspection, and missing statutory information is usually picked up. It is one of the easiest things to get right in advance, which is why it is frustrating when it goes wrong.
When was the DfE guidance last updated?
Both the maintained schools guidance and the academies guidance were last updated on 24 October 2024. We reviewed this page on 19 October 2026. The Academy Trust Handbook 2026 took effect on 1 October 2026 and replaces the 2025 edition.
What are the key deadlines?
Pupil premium strategy by 31 December. Trust audited accounts, plus a funds summary statement for multi-academy trusts, by 31 January. Academy admission arrangements by 15 March. The SEN information report and public sector equality duty compliance are annual, and equality objectives run on a four year cycle.
Do we have to publish financial information?
Maintained schools publish the number of employees earning over 拢100,000 in bands of 拢10,000, along with a link to the schools financial benchmarking service. Academy trusts publish their audited annual report and accounts by 31 January, along with executive pay details. Multi-academy trusts also publish a summary statement of how funds are distributed across their schools.
Who is responsible for keeping the website compliant?
The school or trust is, because only you have the figures, the policies and the dates. What we do is make sure every required item has somewhere to live, check your website against the DfE list every night, flag policies and documents that are out of date, and tell you when the DfE guidance changes so nothing slips by unnoticed.
Does a Realsmart website keep us compliant automatically?
Partly, and we would rather be clear about which part. We build the structure so that every required item has a permanent home, and every night your website is checked against the DfE list for your type of school. The check flags documents that look out of date, and a missing page can be started from a template. Our policy library flags documents when they are due for review, and we tell you when the DfE guidance changes. The content itself still has to come from you, because only your school knows your figures and your policies. The check tells you what needs doing; it does not do it for you.
More on school websites
More on keeping a school website compliant and current.
Ensuring your website is Ofsted compliant
The checks worth doing on your website before an inspection.
Sync your website policies with Google Drive or OneDrive
Keep your policy library up to date without uploading anything twice.
The anatomy of a school website
The sections every school website needs, and where parents look for them.
Check any school’s website for free
Not with us yet? Our free website check reads a school’s public website and emails a report against the DfE’s list of what schools must publish online.
About our website checker
It runs only when someone asks for a check, and its user agent is RealsmartComplianceCheck/1.0.
- It reads only public pages and documents, one request at a time, at least two seconds apart.
- It obeys robots.txt, including any
Crawl-delay. To stop it, addUser-agent: RealsmartComplianceCheckandDisallow: /to your robots.txt. - It never signs in, fills in forms or keeps the text of your documents.
To ask us never to check your website, email support@realsmart.co.uk.
Talk to us about your school website
麻豆映画 a free demo and we will show you how the statutory pages are structured on a Realsmart site, how the nightly compliance check works, walk you through the content management system and answer any questions about cost.