Website compliance · DfE & Ofsted
Stress-free school website compliance — DfE requirements, Ofsted-ready
Get a clear picture of where your school website stands against the DfE's publication requirements — the list Ofsted checks before they visit — in hours, not weeks of manual checking, then fix any gaps with AI-guided assistance.
We check the DfE publication list that applies to your school type, taken from your own GIAS record: 41 checks. We open each of the 18 statutory policies and read the review date stated inside the PDF, so an out-of-date safeguarding policy is caught before an inspector reads it. Every result shows the page or file it came from, and fixes are drafted from your own documents. Nobody needs a developer.
Illustrative preview — your review reflects your live website
How it works
Review
We check every page and PDF against the gov.uk DfE publication lists — for maintained schools, and for academies and free schools.
Fix
Where there are gaps, our AI guides you to ready-to-publish wording — no developer needed.
Re-check
We re-check your website about once a term. Every report states which version of the DfE lists it was checked against, so when the DfE changes the rules you can see that the rules moved, not your website.
Status at a glance
Every DfE criterion gets one of four results
We assess each criterion — not each page. Your compliance status depends on the required criteria only, so you can fall short on a recommended one and still be compliant.
For every criterion we show where we looked — the exact pages and PDFs — and the evidence behind the result.
You're covered — the required criterion is met, with evidence on your site.
We found related content but couldn't confirm the criterion — worth a human look.
A required criterion appears unmet across the pages we checked — a compliance issue.
A recommended criterion or good-practice suggestion, not compulsory.
What Signal Layer does
Review your website against the DfE's publication rules
We run 41 automated and guided checks — over 100 statutory line items — against both gov.uk DfE publication lists: one for maintained schools, one for academies and free schools. Tailored to your school type using official GIAS data, with statutory safeguarding, attendance and restraint guidance layered on top.
Get ready-to-publish fixes for any gaps
Where we find gaps, our AI guides you through updating your policies to meet the DfE's publication requirements. You can upload your existing documents, and we'll pull the correct information into a ready-to-publish document, complete with suggested wording. Ready for you to review and publish — right away.
Check every page, and every PDF
A lot of school policies live in PDF documents that aren't easy to find — or sit embedded in the page, or on Google Drive. Never worry if they're compliant again — we pull them in automatically, with sensible filters to avoid crawling junk or counting linked government documents as your own.
Separate ‘must haves’ from ‘nice to haves’
Findings are grouped into what you must publish, what you should publish, and what's good practice — so you know which gaps are legal compliance issues and which are improvement opportunities.
Automatically stay up to date
We re-check your website about once a term. Drift gets caught at the next re-check, not at next year's panic.
Accessibility
Accessibility is a separate legal duty
Schools are partially exempt from the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations: the exemption covers most of the site, but not the content people need in order to use your services — admissions forms, payments, parent portals — and you must still publish an accessibility statement. The Equality Act 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments applies to the rest of the site regardless. Signal Layer measures the whole site against WCAG 2.2 AA, drafts your statement, and checks your DfE publishing duty in one place. See how we handle accessibility
Who it's for
Specifically designed for schools in England.
Our standards are tailored to your school type — maintained schools, academies and free schools each get the DfE publication list that applies to them, including the academy- and trust-specific duties trusts are held to, using official GIAS data. Independent schools follow different rules — the Independent School Standards — and get a dedicated service of their own, linked below. FE colleges aren't covered yet.
Free overview review
Full compliance service
School advisers, improvement partners and inspectors working across a number of schools — get in touch and we'll put together a plan that fits.
Independent schools
A different rulebook — and its own service
Independent schools are inspected against the Independent School Standards (ISSR 2014), not the DfE publication lists. Our dedicated service checks your website the way that law actually reads — statutory-policy currency, company, charity and consumer-law disclosures, and a WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility report as good practice — at £399 + VAT per school per year.
Get a free review of your website's compliance
Start my free reviewThe free review is the full scorecard: every check and its result, run on your live website, no card. Paying adds where we looked, what we found, and the drafted fix.
Ask us a question
Prefer us to demo the platform directly, or have a question? Drop our London-based team a line:
hello@signal-layer.ai