A School Website and Student Photos
A secondary school wants a new website to publish news, exam timetables and photos of sports day. The site will be built by a student club using a free website builder. The head teacher wants photos of students, including named prize winners, published quickly. A parent complains that their child's photo was published without permission. The school also wants the site to load quickly for parents using mobile phones on slow connections, and to be found by search engines. The club has no budget and limited time.
1. Advise the school on what it must do before publishing photos of students, and explain the technical choices that support this.
Read the worked answer
The school must obtain consent before publishing identifiable photos of students, following its data protection policy. Consent should cover where the photo appears and for how long, and parents should be able to withdraw it. Names should not be paired with photos unless there is a clear reason and consent, because a name plus a photo identifies a child publicly.
Technically, the club should:
- Keep a register of which photos are approved, so the site can be checked against it.
- Use a content management system with user accounts, so only approved editors can publish.
- Avoid publishing high-resolution images that could be reused elsewhere, and remove location data from photos.
- Provide a simple way to remove a photo quickly if consent is withdrawn.
Publishing quickly must not override consent; a short delay to check permission is the correct trade-off.
2. Recommend how to make the site fast on slow mobile connections and easy to find in search results.
Read the worked answer
Speed on slow links depends mostly on page size. The club should compress images and use small, correctly sized pictures rather than full camera files, and avoid autoplay video. It should use a simple layout with minimal scripts, and enable caching so repeat visits load faster. These choices cost nothing and give the biggest gains.
For search engines, each page needs a clear title, headings and description, meaningful link text, and text alternatives for images. A simple site structure with links between pages helps search engines understand it. The site should also work on mobile screens, since search engines favour mobile-friendly pages.
The judgement is to prioritise image compression and clean structure, because they improve both speed and search ranking at the same time.