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What a school website assistant should answer for parents
Almost everybody typing into an independent school website is a parent, and almost every question is one of three: can we get in, can we afford it, and what will the term actually look like. Those are answerable from documents the school already produces. What makes this trade different from everything else in the family is that a pupil might type too, and that changes the design of the whole assistant.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- when is the deadline for entry at 11
- how much are the fees per term
- do you offer bursaries
- how does the scholarship assessment work
- when is the next open morning
- do you have a waiting list for reception
- which villages does the school bus cover
- what is on the uniform list
- do you offer wraparound care
- is there a sibling discount
- how long is the assessment day
- what happens if we move away mid year
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| The admissions timeline for every entry point | Registration deadlines, assessment dates, offer dates and acceptance deadlines, listed per entry year rather than as one calendar. A parent looking at entry at seven has no use for the sixth form dates, and a single blended page produces answers that mix the two. |
|---|---|
| The fee schedule and everything alongside it | Termly tuition by year group, the registration and acceptance deposits, and the extras that surprise people: trips, instrumental lessons, lunches, examination entry fees. Index the extras deliberately, because the gap between the headline fee and the actual invoice is the most common source of complaint in this trade. |
| Bursary and scholarship policy | What each award is, how means testing works where it applies, the evidence a family has to supply, and the closing dates. Keep the policy separate from the marketing page, because the policy is the document that answers the follow up questions. |
| The assessment day description | What a candidate does on the day, how long it lasts, whether a parent stays, what the child should bring, and whether there is an interview. This is anxiety material, and answering it well is worth more to a parent than any prospectus copy. |
| Transport routes and catchment | The bus routes with their pick up points, the cost, and whether places on them are limited. Distance decides applications, and a parent who cannot work out whether you reach their village will simply not apply. |
| Uniform, equipment and the practical joining pack | The supplier, the required list against the optional list, the second hand arrangement, and what a new pupil needs on the first day. Small, repetitive, endlessly asked, and perfectly suited to being answered without a person. |
What has to reach a person
Anything about a named child
Whether a place was offered, how an assessment went, whether a sibling will be prioritised, what a report said. The assistant cannot see any of it and should not appear to. Confirming that a named child even applied to your school is a disclosure about a minor.
This is the hardest rule to hold because parents ask it warmly and reasonably. The refusal has to be equally warm and end with the registrar's route rather than an apology.
Any message that reads as a safeguarding concern
A pupil describing something that happened to them, a parent raising a concern about a member of staff or another child, anything that mentions harm. Safeguarding duties apply to everyone working with children in essentially every country, and they include getting a concern to a named person quickly.
The assistant must not take a report, ask follow up questions, or reassure. It should name the designated safeguarding route the school already publishes and hand over immediately. If the school has not decided what that message says, decide it before the widget goes live rather than after.
Whether a child will be offered a place
Parents ask this in the form of a question about their child's current school, their reading age, or their reference. The assistant can describe how the assessment works and what the school looks for as published. It cannot weigh a child, and a hint either way in the school's name is worse than silence.
Individual fee arrangements
Whether a payment can be spread differently, whether a bursary would be granted at a given income, whether an outstanding balance can wait. Every one of these is a decision about one family, made by the bursar. Publish the policy, answer from the policy, hand the case over.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot discuss an individual child or family, including applications, assessments or fee arrangements. Please contact the admissions registrar, whose details are on this page. If you have a concern about a child's safety or wellbeing, contact the school by phone today rather than through this chat.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Safeguarding changes who the assistant is designed for
There is a real difference between an assistant aimed at parents on a public admissions site and one a pupil can reach from a portal. The second is a channel into the school for a child, and channels into a school for children carry policy obligations, monitoring expectations and a named responsible person.
Most schools should keep it firmly on the parent facing side of the site and say so in the greeting. If a pupil facing deployment is genuinely wanted, treat it as a safeguarding decision rather than a website decision.
Pupil records are protected personal data
Admissions files, assessment results, reports, medical and dietary information and behaviour records are personal data about children, which most data protection regimes treat with extra care. The assistant should never hold them, and should never be connected to a system that does without a deliberate decision and a reason.
Fee information has to be complete to be honest
Advertising and consumer rules in most markets expect a price shown to a parent to include the compulsory parts of it. An assistant quoting a termly tuition figure while the indexed material never mentions the compulsory lunch charge or the registration deposit is giving an incomplete price in the school's name.
Index the full fee schedule including the mandatory extras, and the assistant inherits the completeness automatically.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Anything about a named pupil, applicant or family.
- Whether a particular child is likely to pass the assessment.
- Whether a bursary application would succeed at a given income.
- Any response to a safeguarding disclosure beyond naming the school's route.
- Individual arrangements on fees, deposits or payment dates.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a private school rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- The open morning questions parents ask and schools rarely answer onlineParents ask about dress, siblings, parking and what the assessment involves. All of it is publishable and almost none of it is published.
- Waiting list questions, where the only honest answer is about the processHow the list is ordered, how families are contacted, and why no honest answer includes a position number or a likelihood.
- Fee account questions from parents, and where the assistant stopsTermly billing, extras, sibling discounts and payment plans are publishable. A specific family account is not, and never becomes so.
- Complaints on a school site, where the assistant routes and nothing elseA school complaints procedure has formal stages and deadlines. The assistant's only job is to name them and take the details.
- The individual child rule, and everything that follows from itAny question about an individual child stops the assistant dead. Here is the trigger, the wording, and why it is a rule rather than a judgement.
- A parent wants to come and look round. Which visit do they mean?Three different school visits, arranged three different ways, and nothing said in a chat window reaches the registrar's diary.
- The termly figure, the annual figure, and the gap between themFees are published per term by year group. The compulsory charges sit outside them, and the registration fee is not a fee at all.
- Distance is an admissions question before it is a logistics oneThe route and its pick up points decide whether a family applies at all. The two gates, the barrier and signing in come after.
- Are you open is four different questions on a school siteThe junior day and the senior day end at different times, and a question asked in August is about the office rather than the school.
- Three requests that arrive as one question about accessLearning support, an arrangement for the entrance assessment and a step free route are three answers, and only one of them is a fact.
- What a school can actually delete when a family asksRegistration papers, assessment scripts and a reference from another school are different records, and a child cannot make the request.
- The most contested clause in the parent contract, and how to state itWithdrawing a pupil, dropping the coach seat and stopping music lessons all carry notice periods, and they are not the same period.
- What actually comes back, and what only ever gets creditedA deposit credited against the final term is not a refund. Neither is an absent half term, and a trip stops being recoverable early.
- Group visits, where the visitors are other people's pupilsA group visit needs ratios, a risk assessment and a date fitted round the timetable. None of that is settled from a chat window.
- Two payments before a child has attended a single dayOne is paid to process an application and does not come back. The other is held against the final term. Families meet both in a fortnight.
- The question that needs a bursar rather than a fee scheduleA per family figure turns on year groups, boarding, the coach and a means tested award. The bursar builds it from evidence, not arithmetic.
- Evenings, weekends and the message that cannot wait until morningBoarding duty, the staff member on late cover and an empty office are three different evenings. A welfare message goes to a person at once.
- Between accepting a place and the first morningUniform fittings, forms, the coach seat and the first morning. A summer of deadlines that arrived in one email nobody can find.
Questions
- Should pupils be able to use it?
- Treat that as a separate decision with the safeguarding lead rather than a setting on the website. A parent facing assistant on a public admissions page is an admissions tool. An assistant a child can reach is a communication channel into the school, and those are governed differently in most countries.
- What is the highest value thing to index first?
- The full fee schedule including the compulsory extras, and the admissions timeline broken out by entry point. Between them they answer the two questions every enquiring parent has, and both documents already exist in the bursary and admissions offices.
- Can it tell a parent whether we have space in a year group?
- Only if you publish that and keep it current. Availability changes with a single withdrawal, so unless you connect a source that holds it, the honest answer is how the waiting list works, followed by an offer to take the family's details for the registrar.
- Will it collect enquiries from open morning traffic?
- Yes. When somebody asks to speak to a person it takes a name, an email and their message and sends it to whichever address you nominate, which for most schools is the registrar. It does not put anything in a diary, so the visit itself is still arranged your usual way.
Keep reading
- For a universityApplicants and enrolled students ask different things. What a university assistant can answer about entry, fees and visas, and what it must never predict.
- For a driving schoolLesson prices, block booking, instructor coverage and what a learner needs before a first lesson, without claiming a pass rate or judging readiness.
- For a online courseWhat is included, how long access lasts, refund and cooling off rights, and the honest limit that it cannot see a learner's own progress.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.