Evoluted take School Partnership Trust Academies Back to School

At Evoluted we are not fazed by much so when we were asked to create a whole group of websites for the Schools Partnership Trust Academies (SPTA) we were ready to get back to the classroom and come up with some great ideas for this exciting project.

The SPTA is an exempt charity which operates as a single multi-academy sponsor across a number of academies including infant, primary, secondary and free schools. With a predecessor educational trust history going back to 2004, the SPTA has an impressive record in school improvement and has established an organisation which provides a 21st century model for collaboration with the public sector and is a 'not for profit' organisation with public accountability.

The SPTA wanted a main website to convey its impressive credentials and give straightforward access to its mission and objectives, values and key performance indicators. Yet at the same time it wanted the website to be clear, fresh and provide easy links to all of its academies, each with their own websites.

At Evoluted we used our design skills to create a custom graphic design for the main SPTA website (schoolpartnershiptrust.org.uk) as well as a modified design for the individual academy websites. Each website has been specially created to conform with the design of the main website yet meet the existing branding and colours of the individual academies (see example (www.donvalleyacademy.org.uk).

The main website and the individual academy websites are all managed through a single bespoke content management system (CMS), tailored by Evoluted to meet the needs of the client.

In addition to standard editable SEO features such as editable URLs, page titles and image alt text, the CMS provides each academy with specially-created individual editing facilities so they are able to edit their own content. However, global administrators are able to control which areas of content are editable by standard administrators, helping to restrict access to the editing of important information and enabling the SPTA to ensure that specific content remains standard across all sites.

Using the CMS facility, global administrators can post common information across any number of selected sites. This means they are able to post items such as news articles and job vacancies to several websites at once, without having to input the information repeatedly.

The academies have a degree of flexibility in terms of the extra pages they can add to their own websites, providing them with scope for individuality. The scale and design of the CMS will also support the expansion of the academies and the SPTA.

Phil Thacker, from the Schools Partnership Trust Academies, said: "We are delighted with the websites created by Evoluted. The team has done a great job of custom designing the main website to meet all our needs as well as numerous academy websites which have a common theme yet still retain a degree of individuality. We couldn't be happier with the finished products."

Ash Young, Managing Director of Evoluted, said: "Working on this large project for the Schools Partnership Trust Academies has been quite an education! Our team has really enjoyed the challenge of creating so many websites for the same organisation and creating a bespoke content management system to meet a number of specific needs. As always our team has exceeded the expectations of the client and has created an online presence that SPTA can be proud of."