Have you ever noticed that no matter how good the school, a school’s website is generally rubbish?! For example, Nottingham High School (my school) is supposed to be one of the best fee-paying schools in the UK, but its website (was until recently) awful. The best school website I’ve seen recently is Merchant Taylor’s, but even they got rid of the ‘good’ old site to replace it with a pretty home page, with no content. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that the important thing about school websites is their content, not how good they look!
I reckon the best school websites should have lots of links to good educational resources (if there aren’t any, the school should write its own!), and a teacher from each department should be ‘in charge’ of each department’s website. The Merchant Taylor’s English department contains plenty of links for the various topic areas studied all through the school – our teacher has even started using some of their resources because our school doesn’t have anything like as good.
Junior school websites should follow the same sort of guidelines, but should remember that their target audience is no older than 11. That is why a teacher should be in charge of the website. Cropwell Bishop Primary, my old school, has a great website – almost a Crayola crayon version of Merchant Taylor’s…
I’ve just spotted Toot Hill School’s website (I’d have gone to Toot Hill if I wasn’t at Nottingham High) – just like our website, it’s a glorified advert: all they’ve done is put their prospectus, newsletter and photographs on the internet. To be fair, it looks a hell of a lot better than our site, but that’s because they let pupils design it. My school used to have an internet design team, made up of older pupils and some teachers, but now there is only one teacher who ‘maintains’ the whole website.
Anyway… there’s not a lot we can really do about it at the moment, and I don’t really know what to suggest. Maybe Kev Fear (the teacher in charge of our website) will happen across this rant… or maybe not!
I reckon you should send this link accidentally to tonyslack@rmplc.co.uk, or, write a more appropriate version to beyond500@nottinghamhigh.co.uk – they will be only too keen to listen.
(Btw, why isn’t html allowed in this comment form?)
Trust Hecht (T)(…say it quickly and you’ll realise how Fish gave him his nickname) to post and take it seriously.
Mind you…they shoudl improve the headmaster’s welcome bit…perhaps miss out Chris P alltogether??
I want death to find me planting my cabbages. by texas holdem
Edit by Dafyd – I left this one in, although it’s spam, because I think the comment is quite funny! I edited it though, to get rid of the links to gambling sites and herbal viagra…