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New Brighton Primary School is a primary school for children from 3–11 years, situated close to the promenade at New Brighton. It is a large school which is split into four discreet departments, offering a very personal and caring environment for each individual child.

What the client wanted

New Brighton Primary School had a website very similar to other schools in Wirral and across the country, built from a very specific template and with very little room for manoeuvre. Head Coleen Hibbard wanted a site that could be regularly updated and would allow the school to showcase its pictures and other content in a way that hadn’t been possible before.

In addition to the website, the school was also interested in a termly newsletter.

What we did

Various factors went into creating the new website: my ideas about what the site should contain, such as staff lists with photographs, galleries and an easy way to contact the school, the information Ofsted insists upon, and the school’s own ideas.

With all that information, I came up with a design which was then tweaked and modified until the school was absolutely happy with it. Once that stage had been reached, I moved it onto the existing URL so that parents with the old site in their favourites would not be left wondering where the school website had gone.

For the newsletter, the procedure is relatively simple from the school’s perspective: at the end of every term, I come into school and spend a few hours talking to staff and pupils about the highlights of the term and taking photographs when necessary. The teachers also send me photographs which they have taken in school. I then write it all up into a magazine-style newsletter with lead stories, short pieces and picture stories, which is printed by a local printer and sent home to parents in the last week of term.

End result

The school website has been a great success. Parents and teachers alike find the calendar especially useful as it allows them to look only at events which concern their child’s year. The galleries section continues to grow and another key feature is that policies, term dates and so on can be read on the website, rather than in PDF form which parents have to download to look at.

The newsletter has been another great success. Teachers now preparing useful information and photographs in time for my termly visit, pupils are only too happy to talk about what they have done and parents enjoy reading the thrice-yearly mini-magazine about the school.

Testimonial

The school newsletter is packed with colourful photos and well written stories telling us all about what the children get up to.

Our son is always proud to see his friends in it!

It is produced to a high standard which, as well as celebrating the children’s achievements, serves to demonstrate the investment that the school is prepared to make in the pupils’ education and wellbeing.

The school website has all the information you need as a parent – from term dates to lunch menus.

It loads quickly, it is personably written and is easy to navigate. Including photos of the staff is a good idea as my son could see his teachers before he started school for the first time.

Daisy Fox, author of Get Ahead Fred and mum