Key facts
- £1 a day + VAT for a managed school website
- DfE guidance lists what maintained schools must publish online; academies have their own guidance
- Keeping Children Safe in Education expects the child protection policy to be publicly available, usually on the website
- Cloudflare caching for sudden traffic spikes such as closure announcements
- Daily backups and free SSL
- Data processing agreement available on request
Statutory pages that must stay online
The Department for Education publishes guidance on what maintained schools must publish online. It includes contact details, admission arrangements, Ofsted reports, exam and assessment results, curriculum information, behaviour and charging policies, the SEN information report, pupil premium and PE and sport premium information, governance details and more. Academies and free schools follow separate DfE guidance linked to their funding agreements.
Inspectors, parents and prospective families check these pages. Our job is to keep them online, fast and safe from accidental breakage. We'd also recommend a scheduled check each term that every required document link still works.
Safeguarding on the website
- Child protection policy: Keeping Children Safe in Education expects it to be publicly available, which normally means on the website.
- Designated safeguarding lead details should be easy to find.
- Photos of pupils: only publish with consent, avoid full names next to images, and strip location data from photos before upload.
- Logins: every staff editor gets their own account, removed when they leave. No shared passwords on a sticky note in the office.
The snow day problem
School websites are quiet most of the time, then every parent checks at 7am when it snows. Underpowered hosting falls over at exactly the moment you need it. With your DNS on Cloudflare, pages and images are cached at the edge, so an announcement page can serve a sudden surge without overwhelming the server. We can also help you set up a simple, light page for urgent notices.
Data protection
Keep pupil records in your MIS and parent communication platform, not on the public website. Forms on the site, such as admissions enquiries or job applications, should collect only what's needed. As your host we act as a processor and provide a data processing agreement on request. See UK GDPR and hosting.
Moving from a school website provider
Many schools are on specialist platforms. If yours is built on WordPress or another standard CMS, or you want to move to one, we can host it. We'll migrate the site, keep every statutory document link intact and switch over with minimal disruption. Order at clients.dijitul.uk/order; invoices are emailed to your school business manager. See WordPress hosting and Moodle hosting.
Frequently asked questions
What does a school have to publish on its website?
DfE guidance for maintained schools includes contact details, admissions, Ofsted reports, results, curriculum, key policies, the SEN information report, pupil premium and PE and sport premium details, and governance information. Academies follow separate DfE guidance. Check GOV.UK for the current list.
Does a school have to put its safeguarding policy on its website?
Keeping Children Safe in Education expects the child protection policy to be publicly available, and schools normally publish it on their website along with designated safeguarding lead details.
Why does our school website crash on snow days?
Because hundreds of parents load it at the same moment and the hosting can't serve them all. Caching through a CDN such as Cloudflare fixes most of this. dijitul hosts school websites behind Cloudflare for £1 a day + VAT.
How much should a school pay for website hosting?
Specialist school platforms often bundle hosting with design and support. If you just need reliable managed hosting for a standard CMS site, dijitul charges £1 a day + VAT including backups, SSL, a domain and migration.
Can we put photos of pupils on the school website?
Only with appropriate consent, in line with your safeguarding and data protection policies. Avoid naming pupils alongside photos and remove location metadata from images before upload.
Can dijitul host our school's Moodle?
Yes. A small Moodle can run on managed hosting, while larger installations with many active users need a quoted server with more resources. dijitul can advise based on your user numbers.
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Set it up and forget about it
Managed hosting, Plesk, Cloudflare DNS, daily backups and your domain for £1 a day + VAT. We move your site for you.