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Statutory Information for Academies & Trusts

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Blog ImageStatutory Information for school websites

Like for mainstream schools, the Government have published a set of information which has to be provided in order that Academies and Trusts (and Free Schools) be compliant with government legislation. This legislation was published in June 2016 and evolves as regulatory demands change.  Note that if your school or college is one of the following types, you need to check your funding agreement to find out exactly what information you must publish on your website; academies, including free schools, studio schools and university technical colleges, sixth-form colleges, general further education (FE) colleges. 

There are also publishing requirements set out within the Equality Act 2010 and Children and Families Act 2014, with which you must comply.

This guidance gives an overview of those requirements and the further information that the Department for Education (DfE) recommends that you publish on your website if you are one of these schools or colleges. Many academy trusts are under a duty to publish much of this further information, due to clauses in their funding agreements.

To help you, we have provided a bullet point list of the key requirements as of February 2021. As more changes arise and are brought to our attention we will update this page accordingly. Note, for technical accuracy, the content below is taken directly from the GOV.UK website for which we provide a link here. We also outline how we help to show this information on your website.

What academies, free schools and colleges should publish online

Note: Where additional and significant notes are needed, they are shown as a click-through button in the text below to reach the relevant section on the .GOV website.

School or college contact details

Your website should include the:

  • name of your school or college
  • postal address of your school or college
  • telephone number of your school or college
  • name of the member of staff who deals with queries from parents and other members of the public
  • name of the headteacher or principal
  • name and address of the chair of the governing body (if you have one)
  • name and contact details of your special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) unless you’re a special academy or sixth form or FE college

If you’re an academy, you should publish details about your academy’s sponsor:

  • if the school’s owner is an individual, you should publish their full name and contact details (address and a telephone number)
  • if the school’s owner is a group or organisation, you should publish the address and telephone number of its office.

 Admission arrangements

Admissions arrangements for all mainstream academy schools, other than 16 to 19 institutions must comply with the School admissions code and the School admission appeals code.

Academy trusts must publish the admissions arrangements for their schools on their website and keep them there for the whole of the offer year (the school year in which offers for places are made).

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

OFSTED Reports

You must publish either a copy of your school’s most recent Ofsted report or a link to the report on the Ofsted website.

  • Although it is not stated as a mandatory requirement, it is seen as helpful information to provide web links to the OFSTED Parent View and the Government School Comparison websites for your school

Tapiochre usually provide web links to all of the key OFSTED sites

Exam and assessment results

Schools are not required to publish their exam and assessment results from the 2019 to 2020 academic year as these have not been published as performance measures by the Secretary of State. You must, however, continue to display your 2018 to 2019 performance measures until new performance measures are published. You should clearly mark that these performance measures are not current.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Performance Tables

If you’re an academy or college, you should publish a link to the school and college performance tables and your school or college’s performance tables page.

The Curriculum

Academies should publish:

  • the content of the curriculum your school follows in each academic year for every subject, including for mandatory subjects such as Religious Education, even if it’s taught as part of another subject or subjects or is called something else

An appropriate method for displaying this information is to use downloadable documents. For example, if you use curriculum map files, with one file being used for each year group, then these maps can be shown as downloadable documents. This is becoming a common approach and allows visitors to understand clearly a holistic approach to support for the curriculum.

Information which is related to reading and phonic schemes within key stage one is often found within the body of the page as clear text.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Remote education

You must publish information about your school’s remote education provision on your website. An optional template is available to support schools with this requirement.

Behaviour policy

You must publish details of your school’s behaviour policy.

Follow this link for .gov Notes

Pupil Premium 

If your school receives pupil premium funding, your funding agreement will state what information you need to publish about it. DfE has published templates to support schools in presenting their pupil premium strategy statements.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium

If your school has received year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium funding for the 2019 to 2020 academic year, you must publish:

  • details of how you spent your allocation for that year
  • how your use of that allocation made a difference to the attainment of the pupils who benefit from the funding

As final payments of the Year 7 catch-up premium were made in relation to the 2019 to 2020 academic year, the 2020 to 2021 academic year will be the last year on which schools must report how this funding was used.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium

If your school gets the coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium grant in academic year 2020 to 2021, you should publish details of:

  • how it is intended that the grant will be spent
  • how the effect of this expenditure on the educational attainment of those pupils at the school will be assessed

PE and Sport Premium for Primary Schools

If your school receives PE (physical education) and sport premium funding, you must publish:

  • the amount of premium received
  • a full breakdown of how it has been spent
  • the impact the school has seen on pupils’ PE, physical activity, and sport participation and attainment
  • how the improvements will be sustainable in the future

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Equality Objectives

As public bodies, local-authority-maintained schools must comply with the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act 2010 and the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017. This means you must publish:

  • details of how your school complies with the public sector equality duty - you must update this every year
  • your school’s equality objectives - you must update this at least once every 4 years

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) information

You must publish an Information Report on your website about the implementation of your school’s policy for pupils with SEN and should update it annually.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Careers programme information

Academies and colleges should publish information about their careers programme. This information should relate to the delivery of careers guidance to year 8 to 13 pupils (12 to 18-year olds) and any requirement set out in your funding agreement to deliver careers guidance.

FOLLOW THIS LINK FOR .GOV NOTES

Complaints procedure

We recommend that all academies and colleges publish their complaints policy online.

If you’re an academy, FE or sixth-form college, we recommend that you publish your whistleblowing policy online.

Academies must publish any arrangements for handling complaints from parents of children with special educational needs about the support provided by the school.

Annual reports and accounts

Academies

You should publish the following financial information about your school:

  • annual report
  • annual audited accounts
  • memorandum of association
  • articles of association
  • names of charity trustees and members
  • funding agreement

FE and sixth-form colleges

Colleges should publish their instruments and articles of government on their website.

They should also publish their annual members’ report and audited financial statement every year.

Executive pay

You must publish how many employees have a gross annual salary and benefits of £100,000 or more. You should publish these figures in £10,000 increments. handbook.

Trustees’ information and duties

Academies

Academy trusts must publish accessible and up to date details of governance arrangements. FE and sixth-form colleges

You should publish the following details about your college’s governing body:

  • the governing body’s structure and responsibilities
  • details of any committees
  • the names of all governors, including the Chair

You may wish to simply publish your governors’ handbook, which should include all this information.

You must publish information on the governing body in line with the constitution of governing bodies of maintained schools statutory guidance.

The detail and extent of information required in this section has increased significantly since it was initially mandated. In addition, it has become necessary to show the information in plain text on the page rather than as a downloadable series of information files about the governing body, its functions and associated data. This has resulted in Tapiochre taking the approach to dedicate a page to the governing body. The information needed is tabulated so that all aspects of the governing body is provided to clearly in one place. A link to the governing body page is provided within this section to allow the visitor to quickly reach that information.

Charging and Remissions policy

Academies should publish their charging and remissions policies (this means when you cancel fees). The policies must include details of:

  • the activities or cases where your school will charge pupils’ parents
  • the circumstances where your school will make an exception on a payment you would normally expect to receive under your charging policy

Values and Ethos

Academies and colleges should publish a statement of their ethos and values.

Tapiochre normally extract the statements required from the school prospectus and include them in the body of the page here in plain text.

Requests for Paper Copies

You must include a statement at the top of the page to advise visitors that any information described on the page can be available as hardcopy, at no charge, upon request from the school.

Our Blog...

We blog from time to time when there is something worth blogging about! We look at how schools change how they use their websites and how we can respond to those changes and when we have something really interesting to say, we will! Thanks for reading!

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There are also publishing requirements set out within the Equality Act 2010 and Children and Families Act 2014, with which you must comply.

This guidance gives an overview of those requirements and the further information that the Department for Education (DfE) recommends that you publish on your website if you are one of these schools or colleges. Many academy trusts are under a duty to publish much of this further information, due to clauses in their funding agreements.

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