School sites: where every child doesn't matter

A trawl through nine hundred school websites tells me one thing: they’re not built with young web users in mind

We know that children and teens are increasingly technically-literate and take a digital lifestyle completely for granted. We know that telling them about the high-end communication tools that many of us had as kids - ie public phone boxes, chewed cassette tapes and stamps you actually needed to lick - will elicit a depth of sympathy usually reserved for abandoned animals, or gales of merciless laughter.

And we know that the biggest day-on-day gatherings of these enlightened digital savants is within schools.

Following the above lines of thought to a logical conclusion, you’d expect school websites to be the most child-centric, pupil-friendly, technically-savvy, media-rich destinations on the planet.

Except, of course, they’re not. They’re largely awful. And I say this with some authority, because I’ve spent some time recently looking at nine hundred of them as part of our research here at Paperhorse.

During this process, my browser has frozen so many times that I now keep a can of Homebase de-icer handy. I know I never want to see Comic Sans again. I have discovered that sky blue, buff and lime aren’t a winning colour combination.

I’ve also found that schools consistently make really big mistakes when they implement websites, all of which are completely avoidable. If you're a Head, a teacher or an ICT leader and you'd like to find out what are, click the link below. Then why not sign up for our new series? Your pupils will thank you for it.

BUILDING PUPIL-CENTRED SITES: PART 1

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