Compass Grove School · Dubai, United Arab Emirates
What a private school website looks like when it is finished
A school website exists to answer three questions before a parent has to ask them: what it costs, what the child would actually do all day, and whether there is a place. That means a published fee table, a page per stage, and a tour booking that asks for the year group. Compass Grove School is a five-page site built around that. A build like it is $1,800 to set up and $249 a month.
The design direction, and why
Bright, rounded and warm without turning into a cartoon. A school is chosen by an adult and lived in by a child, so the site has to hold both: colour blocks and soft shapes a six-year-old enjoys looking at over their parent’s shoulder, set in type large enough and contrast high enough that the parent reading the fee table at eleven at night has no trouble at all. Nothing is decoration alone. Each stage has its own colour, and that colour follows it through the year groups, the timetable and the fee table.
Four decisions that do the work
A school site is judged by a parent comparing four tabs. These four decide which tab stays open.
The fees are published
A term fee per year group, plus the one-off costs named rather than hidden. Schools worry that publishing loses them the enquiry. It loses them the enquiry that was never going to enrol, and it wins the tour from the parent who had already decided you were out of reach and was wrong.
A day is shown as a timetable, not as adjectives
Eight-fifteen to two-forty-five, hour by hour, per stage. "Nurturing environment" tells a parent nothing. Knowing that Year 2 has forty minutes outside before phonics tells them everything.
The tour booking asks for the year group
One field changes the whole reply. If the form knows the child is entering Year 4 in September, the first reply can say whether there is a place instead of asking, and the parent hears an answer a day earlier than they would anywhere else.
Term dates are text on a page
Not a PDF, not a photograph of a printed calendar. They are the single most re-visited thing on a school site, they get quoted in search results, and they are read on a phone in a car park.
The five pages
Every one of them answers a question a parent already has, in the order they ask it.
- HomeWhat the school is, who teaches, the fee range, and a tour booking that never leaves the screen.
- LearningA page per stage: what a day contains, how big a class is, and the teachers by name.
- LifeClubs, lunch, trips and the gallery. The page a child looks at.
- AdmissionsThe published fee table, the one-off costs, term dates, and the four steps from enquiry to first day.
- VisitBook a tour, the address, the school run, and the bus routes.
The build, in numbers
Measured on the demo you can open, not on a similar site somewhere.
- Pages
- 5
- Time to build
- 7 days from content
- Setup
- $1,800
- Monthly
- $249
- Languages
- English and Arabic
- Fee table
- Published, per year group
Questions people actually ask
How much does a private school website cost?
A site like this one is $1,800 to set up and $249 a month. The monthly covers hosting, SSL, backups, monitoring and two content changes a month, which for a school is usually the term dates and the fee table.
Should a school publish its fees online?
Yes. A parent shortlisting schools will not enquire to find out a number they can get from the school down the road in one click. Publishing the fee table by year group filters out the enquiries that were never going to enrol and brings forward the ones that will.
What should a private school website include?
A published fee table by year group, a page per stage with the daily timetable and class sizes, teachers named with faces, term dates as text, a gallery of real school life, and a tour booking that asks which year group the child is entering.
Can I see a private school website example?
Compass Grove School, linked on this page, is a complete build with the year groups, the fee table, the school calendar and a tour booking. The school is fictional; the site is a real build you can open and click through.
Want this for your school?
Send me your prospectus and your fee schedule. That is enough for me to price the site and show you which pages they would live on.
Send an enquiry