Secondary School Websites That Stay Organised as They Grow
A secondary school website carries far more than a primary one. Departments, options, vacancies, exam information, sixth form admissions, policies and hundreds of documents. We have been building secondary school websites in the UK for over 20 years, and we plan the structure so the site is still easy to find your way around in year five, not just on launch day.
Free support, ongoing training, and a design refresh every three years.
What secondary schools tell us about their old website
Secondary schools don’t usually have a design problem. They have a structure problem. Too much content, too many people adding to it, and no obvious route through it for a parent in a hurry.
It fell apart as it grew
What schools tell usA homepage that looked good at launch, and a site that had turned into an unnavigable pile of documents by the end of the second year.
How we workWe plan the structure for a school with fifteen departments and four hundred documents, so the site is still easy to use in year five.
One person did everything
What schools tell usA single login passed round the staffroom, or a bottleneck where every change goes through one very busy person.
How we workPermissions are set per person, so a head of department updates their own area and nothing else. Training carries on for every contributor, not just at launch.
The bill kept growing
What schools tell usA competitive quote at the start, then charges for new sections, template changes and anything outside the original spec.
How we workOne annual price covering hosting, support, training, every feature and a design refresh every three years.
Secondary school websites we have designed
Live secondary school websites we built. Very different schools with very different briefs, because we design each site for the school rather than working from a template.
Heartlands High School
A clean, modern secondary school website with a strong complementary colour palette. Heartlands carry a lot of information and the design holds all of it without feeling heavy. The restraint in the palette is what makes that work.
Monkseaton Middle School
The brief here was navigation above everything else. A parent should never have to guess where something lives, and the whole structure was built around that. It is an easy site to move around, which is difficult to pull off at this size.
Alperton
A deliberately content heavy homepage, with animation used to bring it in a section at a time. Visitors get led through a lot of information instead of meeting all of it at once. An ambitious brief that paid off.
All Saints York
A secondary school inside a large academy trust, so the site has to carry its own identity and the trust’s at the same time. We built it as part of the wider NPCAT estate, sharing a platform without looking like a copy of the others.
The features secondary schools ask us for
Secondary schools ask for a fairly specific set of things, and after 20 years we have built all of them. They come with the site rather than as a change request.
Vacancy listings with closing dates and application packs. Policy libraries that tell you when a policy is due for review. Options and curriculum areas by department. Exam and assessment information. Term dates and calendars. Site wide alert banners. Sixth form admissions journeys, staff and governor directories, and newsletter and letters home archives. When we build something new for one secondary, every secondary gets it.
A public shop window and a private portal
Your website is doing marketing and day to day operations at the same time. A Year 6 family deciding where to apply needs something completely different from a Year 11 student chasing a revision timetable.
Logged in dashboards give each person a homepage built around who they are, so a Year 7 parent, a sixth former, a governor and a member of staff all see something different. We also build MIS sync and Google Workspace tools for schools, so those logins can line up with the systems you already run.
Including the parts only secondaries have to publish
Secondary schools have publishing duties that primaries don’t, and they are the ones most often missed. The careers programme with a named careers lead and their contact details, the provider access policy statement required under the Baker Clause, KS4 and where relevant KS5 results, and the full list of courses offered at Key Stage 4.
We give those a home alongside everything else, including pupil premium, PE and sport premium, the SEN information report, curriculum, admissions, governance, equality objectives and financial benchmarking. You can read our full guide to school website compliance.
Built to stay online on your busiest days
A secondary school website’s heaviest days are entirely predictable. Results morning, an options deadline, an open evening, or the 6am when you need to tell 1,200 families the school is shut.
Every site sits behind Cloudflare DDoS protection on AWS, and we apply the WordPress and plugin security updates ourselves rather than leaving them to your network manager. We commit to 99.9% uptime. Support is free and unlimited, we aim to answer within the hour, and our average is under 30 minutes.
More secondary school websites by Realsmart
A cross section of live secondary school websites we have designed and built, across local authority schools, academies and trust run secondaries.
Still under contract somewhere else?
For a secondary with a lot of content, starting before your contract ends is usually the right call anyway.
We work back from your end date
Tell us when your current contract finishes and we build the schedule backwards from it, so the new site is ready to go live the day you are free.
All the work happens beforehand
Design, build and content migration can all be done while you are still with your current provider. Nothing goes live until you say so.
We move your content for you
Hundreds of policies, letters and department pages is the part schools dread. It is included in your price, and we tidy up the presentation as we move it.
Twenty years of working with schools
We have worked with Realsmart for over ten years and are currently working with the web development team to refresh all of our school websites. I could not recommend the team enough. They are friendly and approachable and at the same time very skilled and extremely professional with their work. Their customer service is exemplary and second to none and they completely understand the school sector and what is important to schools.
I found the team to be enormously patient in supporting me to achieve what we wanted with the sites, and highly responsive to queries, it seemed that nothing was too much trouble. It also felt like the team had a real appreciation for our budget constraints. I would highly recommend them as a partner.
One price for your secondary school website
Schools get quoted competitively and billed repeatedly. Here is what your subscription covers, and what we will never invoice you for separately.
- Design and build of your secondary school website
- Hosting on AWS with Cloudflare protection
- Free, unlimited support from our UK team
- Ongoing training for your team
- Every feature we build, now and in future
- Security and CMS updates, applied by us
- A design refresh every three years
- Content migration from your existing website
What we don’t charge extra for
- Adding a new department area, section or template
- Changing your colours, logo or branding
- Getting your own content back if you leave
- Support tickets, however many you raise
Secondary school website FAQs
What should a secondary school website include?
Alongside the information you have to publish, you need curriculum and options information by department, exam and assessment data, sixth form admissions, vacancies, term dates, uniform, the school day, policies and a clear way to make contact. It also has to work as a marketing site for Year 6 families deciding where to apply.
Can different staff edit different parts of the site?
Yes. Permissions are set per person, so a head of department can update their own area without being able to change anything else. That is usually the difference between a site that stays current and one that stops being updated because everything goes through one person.
Are your secondary school websites DfE compliant?
Yes, including the requirements specific to secondaries. The careers programme with a named careers lead and contact details, the provider access policy statement, KS4 and KS5 results, and the full Key Stage 4 course list. We give each one a permanent home when we build the site.
Can we post job vacancies on the website?
Yes, as standard. Vacancies come with closing dates and downloadable application packs, and they come off the page automatically once they close, so you are never showing a post that closed three weeks ago.
How much does a secondary school website cost?
Secondary schools pay a single annual subscription covering design, build, hosting, support, training, every feature, all updates and a design refresh every three years. There are no separate charges for new sections, templates, branding changes or support tickets. Ask us and we will give you a figure without a sales process.
We are still under contract elsewhere, can we start now?
Yes. Tell us when your contract ends and we will design, build and migrate the new site while you are still with your current provider, ready to launch the day you are free. For a secondary with a lot of content, starting early is usually the right call anyway.
Can the website handle results day traffic?
Yes. Sites run on AWS behind Cloudflare, which absorbs the spikes. Results morning and snow closures are the two predictable stress tests for a secondary school website, and we plan for both.
Do you build sixth form sections or separate sixth form sites?
Both. A sixth form can sit as its own area within the main school website, or have a separate site where it has a distinct identity to project. We build sixth form and specialist sites too, which you can see on our specialist school websites page.
More on school websites
Guides and advice for secondary schools thinking about a new website.
School website integrations with third party services
Connecting your website to the other systems your school already uses.
The anatomy of a school website
The sections every school website needs, and where parents look for them.
Advice for changing school website provider
How to plan a move, and what to sort out before your contract ends.
See what your secondary school website could look like
Book a free demo. We will show you the content management system, walk you through secondary school websites we have built, and give you a straight answer on cost.