School Websites – A Lost Opportunity?

Who reads a school website?

Statistically, teachers and parents visit only their own or those of their nearest schools. Reading more widely sparks the syndrome known as ‘shouting at the tele’.

It is not recommended unless you are into research and development.

The writing on many sites is so poor it leads to lots of ‘shouting at the tele’ moments.

All school websites look alike. They are colourful, with a variety of fonts, predictable layouts and stuffed with long or short written pieces, mainly irrelevant, that often have the opposite effect to that intended.

The layout of each site varies. Figure out how to move through the menu and you can wander deeper into the maze, groping your way around pointless lists and irrelevant topics. Most of the material is of little use to the reader.

I and my team focus on evaluating the writing on these sites. We investigate how the writing is put together: its quality, the image it creates of the school, its impact and the outcome it is supposed to achieve.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is true if the picture is a good one.

Posed photographs of pupils confirm young people go there but tell you little about the school.

Most photographs are, generally, politically correct with a range of gender, ethnicity, colour and age. Quite unusually, many show older pupils walking and talking with younger ones and each wearing the school uniform quite correctly.

A video guided tour of the premises is a useful initiative if recorded with the best film-making and sound recording equipment, fronted by a seasoned presenter and actors, with clear enunciation and genuine put-on surprise when pupils are accosted in the middle of a learning activity or dashing between lessons.

At the end of the videos reviewed we can only say ‘ah, they teach startled young people in a strange building. Who would have thought?’

The video tour idea should be left with estate agent websites where it originated.

Why doesn’t someone come up with the idea of showering their site with photos of staff and teachers instead of pupils? Staff run the place. Generally, they spend more waking time there than they do with their family.

Their school is the place where they create mayhem/boredom/memorable moments, as well as nurturing talent and creating amazing learning.

Staff work resourcefully, independently and in creative cooperation.

They are measured and humiliated in cliched phrases by inspectors, data collectors and turn-around consultants. Still they go back, with inadequate pay, abused by politicians who know little about schools, buoyed up by each other and rewarded by the sight of young people growing to adulthood in a purposeful way.

Imagine the effect if you introduced photos showing staff in the staffroom, sipping tea, sleeping, chatting, reading comics, tidying their locker, searching for their car keys.

How about a video focussed on staff engaging in a ‘purposeful conversation’ with the person who missed their turn to put the mugs in the dishwasher?

It would be fascinating to read or see photographs of what lunchtime supervisors do as they “encapsulate the true essence of what makes us such an outstanding school”.

Is there a photograph capturing a classroom assistant making a difference?

Is there a photo of what is going on when you are “aspiring to develop the full potential of every pupil”? 

By the way, your photos are dated if a past pupil at a 10th anniversary reunion comments on the photo, still on your website, showing them as a new first year pupil.

Another tip – please name the occupants if you show the principal posing with a group of pupils. Some photographs leave us wondering who is the old person leering at a group of young people walking down steps, or why the pupils are sitting at a table trying to ignore the intruder.

Poorly written school websites do little harm, even when they are irrelevant, insulting or not fit for purpose. Mainly because the readers don’t understand what they are reading. When they can, they don’t believe what they read.

Well written school websites do you a massive favour when the writing is carefully done, the content is thought through and someone takes time to think of the reader.

Your website is too public to be treated lightly.

Sort it now.

(c) Ted Dunphy

12.01.2024