School profile

The Education Act 2005 sets out a statutory requirement, from 1 September 2005, for the governing bodies of all maintained schools in England to prepare and publish a school profile annually, in place of an annual parents' meeting and governors' annual report. This requirement applies to all maintained schools except nursery schools. Maintained nursery schools are, for the time being, still required to produce governors' annual reports and therefore they do not publish profiles.

The format of this profile includes, where relevant, sections on the school's performance, pre-populated with data supplied by the DCSF, as well as narrative sections for the school to complete. There are sample templates for infant (word), primary (word), secondary (word), and special (word) schools

Each maintained school will complete and publish the school profile once a year. As the first profile will be launched in the spring term 2006 it is important that it is available for parents in the summer term 2006. This will allow adequate time for parents to read and, if necessary, comment on it. Some schools may be keen to complete their profiles earlier than this and of course, subject to the pre-populated sections being complete, they may do so.

This first school profile will be reporting on the 2004/ 05 academic year.

Advice has been sought from the DCSF regarding governing bodies that may have already reported on the 04/05 school year in the summer term 2005. Confirmation has been received that a profile must be produced for 2004/05 school year irrespective of whether the governing body has previously produced an annual report to parents for that school year.

The school profile site on Teachernet is now live and all headteachers will have received information from the DCSF by 18 January on the procedure for accessing their own school’s profile online. Chairs of governors will be receiving information via the DCSF bulletin Spectrum.

The DCSF will populate the data sections for your school over the
following periods:

Key Stage 2 - December 2005
Key Stage 4 - January 2006
Key Stage 3 - March 2006

Schools may access their profile and complete some of the text boxes and then return to the site and complete the rest at a later date. However, they should ensure that all relevant areas of the profile have been completed before publishing. Once the profile has been submitted for online publication it cannot be amended.

It is for each governing body to determine what arrangements are best suited to them for the preparation of the information that is to be included in the profile.

The profile is an online document but schools should produce hard copies for parents who request them.

Although the 2005 Education Act removes the requirement for a school to hold a governors annual meeting with parents, schools can still arrange meetings for parents and governors should they wish to do so.

Further information, guidance and FAQs are available on the Teachernet website.