Balla National School colourful website is a great representation of their school, its importance in the community and as a point of contact with parents and guardians. There are links to important information on the homepage, with all other important information easily accessible from the top navigation bar. Each class have their own space on the website to update with what’s happening in their classrooms.

As there is a lot of important information on the homepage and Balla National School are aware of this and their user’s journey. As a result there is a small navigation menu on the top right-hand side of the screen. This navigation bar allows the user to quickly get to where they want on the homepage. Another user friendly navigation feature is that there are buttons to bring the user back to the top of the page to the navigation bar.

As parents are most likely the primary users of Balla National School’s website they have their own section on the navigation bar. Within this section there is information on enrolment, school policies and the board of management. A nice feature here are external links to articles, videos and websites to support parents and their roles within their child’s education. A very useful feature is that parents can make payments for school tours and school supplies online, a much more convenient service for parents.

Each class has their own section on the website. While this is a lovely feature for each child and class, we also think that it is a great feature to encourage oral language, recall and retelling skills at home. Parents can read descriptions and see images of some of the activities in the classroom and discuss them at home. 

Another well written feature on the website is the history of the school and the locality. We would have liked however were this accompanied by images for the school and the locality or of work completed by children on these topics. 

All in all this is a well-used and updated site that has thought of the end user by providing not only services such as online payments and enrolment forms but also useful information on policies and classroom events.