School Website Requirements in England: The 2026 Checklist

School website requirements in England come from three places: the Department for Education's lists of information maintained schools and academies must publish, the public sector accessibility regulations, and safeguarding guidance such as Keeping Children Safe in Education. In practice, that means statutory policies and reports, an accessibility statement, a public child protection policy, and a site that works for every parent.

This guide is for school business managers, governors, office staff and the web suppliers who support them. It covers England only. Schools in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different rules. Always check the current DfE pages for your type of school, because the details differ between maintained schools, academies and independent schools.

Where school website requirements come from

Both DfE publishing lists show a last-updated date of 24 October 2024 at the time of writing. New duties still arrive through other routes, such as statutory guidance, so a termly review is the sensible habit.

What maintained schools must publish

The DfE's guidance for maintained schools says they must publish the following. Several items only apply to certain schools, such as those receiving a particular grant or with 250 or more employees.

1. Admission arrangements. Foundation and voluntary aided schools publish their own. Community and voluntary controlled schools link to the local authority's.
2. Behaviour policy.
3. Careers programme information (secondary schools), including the careers leader's contact details, plus a provider access policy statement.
4. Charging and remissions policies.
5. Complaints policy.
6. Contact details, including the name of the member of staff who handles queries and, for mainstream schools, the SENCo's name and contact details.
7. Curriculum information for each year, including RE, the right to withdraw from RE, phonics or reading schemes at key stage 1, key stage 4 courses, and an accessibility plan.
8. Financial information: the number of employees paid over £100,000 in £10,000 bands, and a link to the schools financial benchmarking service.
9. Governance information about the governing body and its committees.
10. Ofsted reports: the latest report or a link to it.
11. Gender pay gap information, if the school has 250 or more employees.
12. PE and sport premium report, if the school receives the funding, by 31 July each year.
13. Public sector equality duty information, updated annually, and equality objectives at least every four years.
14. Pupil premium strategy statement, if funded, by 31 December each year using the DfE template.
15. SEN information report, updated annually.
16. Test, exam and assessment results, with a link to the school's page on the performance tables service.

The guidance also lists items schools should publish, including opening hours, the school uniform policy, remote education information and fuller governor details. The DfE says a school should provide a paper copy of this information free of charge if a parent or carer asks.

What academies must publish

The academies guidance covers similar ground, but the obligations mostly flow from each academy's funding agreement. It includes admission arrangements, the trust's annual report and audited accounts by 31 January, the RSE policy, an accessibility plan, whistleblowing procedures, the SEN information report, executive pay bands, governance documents and member and trustee details, the careers provider access statement, equality information, gender pay gap reporting where relevant, and the PE and sport premium and pupil premium reports where funded.

Multi-academy trusts often run one trust site plus a site per school. Decide which items live where, link between them, and make sure each school's site points to the trust-level documents rather than to a stale copy.

Other policies schools need to publish

Some duties sit outside the two DfE lists:

• Relationships education and RSE policy. The updated statutory guidance, in force from 1 September 2026, says schools must provide a copy of their policy free of charge to anyone who asks and publish it on the school website.
• Child protection policy. KCSIE 2026 came into force on 1 September 2026. Like earlier versions, it says a school's child protection policy should be "available publicly either via the school or college website or by other means", and it expects the designated safeguarding lead to make sure parents know referrals about suspected abuse or neglect may be made.
• Allergy safety policy. The DfE published statutory guidance on allergy safety in schools in July 2026, in force from 1 September 2026. Commentary from law firms such as HCR Law says policies will need to be on the school's website, with the publishing duty to be confirmed through regulations. Check the current DfE guidance for your school type.

Independent schools have their own information requirements under the Independent School Standards, including making safeguarding arrangements available to parents. Inspection reports commonly check this through the school website.

Accessibility: what the regulations ask of schools

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 require public sector websites to meet WCAG 2.2 at level AA, or explain why not, and to publish an accessibility statement.

Primary and secondary schools and nurseries are partially exempt. The exemption doesn't cover "the content people need in order to use their services". GOV.UK's own example is a form for school meal preferences, which must be accessible. Schools still need an accessibility statement.

Other practical points:

• Older PDFs. PDFs and other documents published before 23 September 2018 may not need fixing unless people need them to use a service.
• Monitoring and enforcement. The Government Digital Service monitors a sample of public sector sites. The Equality and Human Rights Commission enforces the requirements in England, Scotland and Wales.
• The Equality Act 2010 still applies regardless of the exemption.

The quickest wins on a typical school site are headings in order, descriptive link text, alt text on images that carry meaning, enough colour contrast, forms with proper labels, and policies published as accessible web pages or tagged PDFs instead of scanned images. Our UK website accessibility checklist and guide to making a website accessible with WCAG go through each one. The free readability checker helps keep parent letters and policy summaries in plain English.

Technical basics that keep a school site compliant

Statutory compliance often fails for boring technical reasons. A policy link breaks when someone replaces a file, or a 20MB scanned PDF won't open on a parent's phone.

Links and documents

• Check for broken links each term. Policies are replaced every year and old links break silently. Run the broken link checker across the statutory information page. Our guide to broken links and redirect chains explains how to fix them for good.
• Keep file names stable. Upload the new behaviour policy under the same URL, or redirect the old one, so links from letters and other sites keep working.
• Shrink scanned documents. Use the PDF compressor for scans and photo-heavy newsletters. It turns pages into images, so keep text-based policies as text, because image-only PDFs aren't accessible to screen readers.
• Compress photos before upload with the image compressor, so event galleries load on mobile data.

Security and email

• HTTPS everywhere. Check the certificate with the SSL checker. Certificates now expire more often, so automatic renewal matters.
• Protect the domain against spoofing. Fraudsters impersonate schools to request payments or login details. Use the DMARC checker to see whether your domain is protected, and work towards a policy of quarantine or reject once all your legitimate senders, such as the newsletter tool and parent communication app, pass. Our guide to stopping email spoofing explains the steps.
• DfE cyber security standards. The DfE's cyber security standards for schools and colleges ask schools to check that email is set up securely and to reduce the risk of third parties sending imitation emails. KCSIE 2026 asks governing bodies to consider those standards as part of safeguarding.

Privacy and cookies

A school website that loads analytics or embedded video usually sets cookies. The rules on consent changed under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, and our guide to cookie consent under the DUAA explains what's now exempt. Link your privacy notices for parents, pupils, staff and job applicants from every page footer.

A termly school website review

1. Compare the site against the current DfE list for your school type, and note any new guidance since last term.
2. Check every statutory item is dated and current: pupil premium, PE and sport premium, SEN information report, equality objectives.
3. Run a broken link scan on the statutory information and policies pages.
4. Review the accessibility statement and update it if you've fixed or found issues.
5. Check the child protection policy is the latest version and names the right designated safeguarding lead.
6. Test the site on a phone as a parent would: find term dates, the complaints policy and how to report absence.
7. Check email authentication after any new parent communication tool is added.

Our free tools for education and training collect the checks above in one place, from PDF tools to accessibility and email checks. Make It Flow's tools run in the browser, so you can compress or merge documents without uploading pupil information to an unknown site.

FAQ

What must a school website include by law?

For maintained schools in England, the DfE lists items such as admission arrangements, behaviour, charging and complaints policies, contact and SENCo details, curriculum information, Ofsted reports, results, governance, the SEN information report and, where funded, pupil premium and PE and sport premium reports. Academies have a similar list driven by their funding agreements.

Do school websites have to meet WCAG 2.2?

State schools are public sector bodies but are partially exempt from the accessibility regulations. Content people need to use the school's services, such as forms, must be accessible, and every school still needs an accessibility statement. The regulations reference WCAG 2.2 level AA as the standard to meet.

Does a school have to publish its safeguarding policy online?

KCSIE 2026 says the child protection policy should be available publicly, either via the school or college website or by other means. In practice, most schools publish it on the website and also offer a copy from the office. Independent schools have similar requirements under the Independent School Standards.

How often should a school update its website?

Review it at least once a term. Some items have fixed deadlines, such as the pupil premium strategy statement by 31 December and the PE and sport premium report by 31 July. Policies should be replaced as soon as governors approve new versions, keeping the same link where possible.

Do academies have to publish the same information as maintained schools?

Not exactly. Academies follow the DfE's separate academies list, which is driven mainly by funding agreements. It overlaps heavily with the maintained schools list but adds trust items such as annual accounts, governance documents, member and trustee details and executive pay bands.

Can schools use PDFs for statutory information?

Yes, but they should be accessible. Text-based, tagged PDFs work with screen readers. Scanned image-only PDFs don't. Where possible, publish key policies as web pages with a downloadable PDF, keep file sizes small for mobile users, and check links still work after each update.