A school website can be fully compliant at the start of September and out of date a few months later.

The problem is rarely a single dramatic omission. More often, policies reach their review dates, staff details change, reports remain labelled for the previous academic year or a document is replaced without checking whether the new version is accessible.

The solution is to treat website compliance as a calendar of recurring responsibilities, not as an annual website audit.

The dates below apply to schools and academy trusts in England. Requirements differ according to school type, phase, admissions responsibility and funding received, so each setting should maintain its own tailored checklist. You can download Greenhouse’s free statutory and Ofsted school website requirements checklist to help identify the requirements that apply to your school.

Before pupils return: complete a September reset

The beginning of the academic year is the natural point to check information that refers to the “current academic year” or may have changed over the summer.

Review:

• Headteacher, chair of governors and staff contact details
• SENCO and careers-lead details
• School opening and closing times
• Term dates and inset days
• Uniform information and suppliers
• Curriculum content for each year and subject
• Careers programme information
• Governance membership and committee structure
• Policy review dates
• Accessibility statement accuracy
• Links to external services and documents

Not everything on this list carries a fixed September deadline. However, leaving last year’s information visible creates avoidable risk and a poor experience for parents.

Secondary schools must publish specified information about their careers provision for the current academic year, including the careers lead’s contact details, a programme summary, its impact-assessment arrangements and a review date. Maintained schools are subject to an explicit publishing requirement; the DfE describes much of the equivalent academy information as information academies “should” publish, alongside the statutory provider-access statement. DfE guidance for maintained schools and DfE guidance for academies

31 August: check in-year admissions information

Academy trusts and foundation or voluntary-aided maintained schools responsible for their own admissions must publish details of how they will manage in-year applications by 31 August each year.

Where the school or trust manages applications, the website must provide the application form and any necessary supplementary information. Where the local authority manages them, the website should direct parents to the relevant local-authority scheme.

Community and voluntary-controlled schools should instead publish the appropriate local-authority link.

This is an easy deadline to overlook because it falls during the summer holiday. Assign ownership before the end of term and schedule the website update in advance. DfE maintained-school admissions requirements

Autumn term: review annual and changing information

Some information does not have a universal calendar deadline but must be reviewed annually or updated when circumstances change.

SEND information report

Schools and academy schools must publish an SEN information report. The DfE says it should be updated annually, with changes made as soon as possible during the year.

Do not simply change the date on the existing document. Confirm that the report still accurately describes:

• Admission arrangements for disabled pupils
• How disabled pupils are protected from less favourable treatment
• Facilities supporting access
• The school’s accessibility plan
• The support and provision currently available

DfE SEND publication requirements

Equality information

Schools and academies must publish information demonstrating compliance with the public sector equality duty and update it every year. Equality objectives must be updated at least every four years.

These are separate responsibilities. An up-to-date set of equality objectives does not remove the need to refresh the school’s annual equality information. DfE public-sector equality duty requirements

Governance information

Membership, roles, attendance records and relevant interests can all change during the year. Governance information should therefore be checked whenever a governor or trustee joins, leaves or changes role—not held over until the next general website review.

For a multi-academy trust, this is best managed centrally, with a clearly identified source of truth rather than separate spreadsheets and web pages maintained by different people.

31 December: publish the pupil premium strategy

Schools and academies receiving pupil premium must publish their strategy statement by 31 December each year using the DfE template.

Even where spending is planned over three years, the published statement must still be updated annually to show current-year activity and the impact of the previous year’s spending. DfE pupil-premium publication requirements

A sensible process is to agree the content internally during the first half of the autumn term, leaving time for approval, accessibility checks and publication before the Christmas break.

31 January: academy trust accounts

Academy trusts must publish their audited annual report and accounts by 31 January each year.

The document should be placed somewhere genuinely easy to find. Publishing a file technically satisfies little if parents, staff and other stakeholders cannot locate it through the website’s navigation or search. DfE academy publication requirements

28 February and 15 March: admissions and appeals

Academy trusts and maintained schools that act as their own admission authority should schedule two further deadlines:

Deadline	Information to publish
28 February	The timetable for organising and hearing admission appeals
15 March	Admission arrangements for the following year’s normal September intake

The published arrangements must remain available throughout the academic year in which offers are made. Replacing one year’s document with the next can therefore be a mistake if both remain relevant.

Schools should clearly label each document with the applicable intake year—for example, “Admissions September 2027”—rather than relying on an upload date or an ambiguous filename. DfE admissions and appeals requirements

31 July: PE and sport premium reporting

Schools and academies receiving PE and sport premium funding must publish the required information by 31 July each year.

This includes:

• Funding received
• How it has been or will be spent
• Impact on participation and attainment
• How improvements will be sustained
• Required Year 6 swimming and water-safety percentages

If a school publishes a downloaded copy of its digital return, the DfE says it must be converted to HTML to meet accessibility requirements. Uploading the downloaded file as a PDF is not sufficient. DfE PE and sport premium requirements

Because the deadline falls after many schools have finished teaching, publication and approval should be planned well before the final week of term.

Accessibility is part of compliance, not a separate exercise

Having the correct information online is only half the job. It must also be accessible.

Public-sector websites are expected to meet WCAG 2.2 AA and publish an accessibility statement explaining the website’s compliance status, known problems and routes for requesting alternative formats. Government accessibility guidance

Common document problems include:

• Scanned PDFs with no usable text
• Missing document headings
• Tables without appropriate structure
• Poor colour contrast
• Meaningful images without alternative text
• Vague link text such as “click here”
• Accessibility statements that no longer describe the live website

An annual automated test is not enough. Accessibility should be checked whenever important content or documents are added.

Turn the checklist into an ongoing process

Knowing what should be published is only the starting point. Every requirement also needs an owner, a review date and a reliable way to show that the latest approved information is live.

A useful compliance record should include:

• The statutory or recommended publication requirement
• Which schools and phases it applies to
• The person responsible
• The publication or review deadline
• The currently published version
• Its approval status
• Evidence that it is live
• The next action required

Greenhouse’s Reports Hub brings this work together through three connected tools:

• Compliance Manager assigns and tracks policies and pages, manages approvals, sends review reminders and maintains a full audit trail.
• Website Audit Checker checks the website against current DfE and Ofsted requirements, identifying outdated information, broken links and potential governance or safeguarding gaps.
• Website Activity Reports provide visibility of content changes, staff activity, form submissions, traffic and Ofsted visits to the website.

For multi-academy trusts, this creates consistent oversight across schools without relying on separate spreadsheets and locally maintained checklists. For individual schools, it reduces the risk that an expired policy or missed deadline goes unnoticed.

The objective is not merely to pass an occasional audit. It is to prevent compliance from drifting between audits.

A practical review rhythm

For most schools, the following routine works well:

• Monthly: check expired documents, broken links and overdue actions
• Termly: review contact details, governance changes and high-use information
• Before fixed deadlines: assign, approve and publish the required return
• Annually: complete a full requirements and accessibility review
• Whenever something changes: update the website rather than waiting for the next scheduled audit

Start by downloading our free school website statutory requirements and Ofsted checklist. If you want to move beyond a point-in-time checklist, explore the Greenhouse Reports Hub for automated reminders, approval workflows, compliance auditing and inspection-ready reporting.as it is now, not as it was at the last inspection or annual review.