Industries / Schools
SEO for a private or international school means making sure parents, Google and AI tools can find the answers a family needs before they enquire: which fee applies to their child, when and how to apply, when they can visit, and what the school's inspection and results say. We checked 60 school websites by hand. 40 published tuition amounts, but only 16 showed exactly dated open days.
GetBorvis / Organic visibility"What does it cost?" really means "what will it cost for my eight-year-old, starting next September, at this campus?". A fee table that does not say which year, which campus and what is excluded answers a different question, and so does an AI summary built from it.
Schools also publish things that sound alike but are not: an inspection report, exam results, an accreditation, an award. Each has its own date, scope and authority. A website that labels them clearly is easier for parents to trust, and easier for search engines and AI tools to describe correctly.
Fact England's independent school inspection framework and Australia's My School guidance both caution against reading one figure alone: inspection weighs several kinds of evidence, and My School says its data should support conversations and visits.
| On the website | Checked by hand (60) | Our checker (66) |
|---|---|---|
| Admissions guidance | 55 of 60 | 62 of 66 link an admissions page |
| Tuition amounts published | 40 of 60, plus 15 uncertain | Not used (sample leans this way) |
| Exactly dated open days or visit events | 16 of 60 | Not measured |
| Current term dates or calendar | 31 of 60 | Not measured |
| Inspection report links | 16 of 60 | Not measured |
| Exam results published | 29 of 60 | Not measured |
| School-type structured data | 20 of 60 | 17 of 66 |
| A working page in another language | 3 of 60 | 4 of 66 mark up language versions |
| No main heading on the homepage | Not measured | 22 of 66 |
| robots.txt names any AI crawler | Not measured | 1 of 64 |
Ours Two independent checks on 16 October 2026. By hand: 60 private and international school websites, six each in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, New York, Boston, Sydney, Melbourne, Dubai, Singapore and Toronto, with every check recorded as found, not found, uncertain or blocked. "Not found" means not found on the pages we read, not missing from the school. Our checker: 70 school websites in 12 cities, found through searches about fees and admissions, so it leans towards schools that publish fees; 66 answered. Both lean towards established, well-known schools. Schools are never named, and nothing here judges a school's quality.
40 of 60 schools published tuition amounts, and every one of them also had admissions guidance. 22 also had a current calendar. The other 20 are not "hiding fees": many were uncertain, in PDFs or behind pages we could not read. Make each fee say its year, stage, campus, period, tax treatment and extras, so it cannot be quoted for the wrong child.
16 schools showed exactly dated open days or visits. 14 of those included upcoming events and 2 showed only past ones. 4 included virtual sessions, 1 was waitlisted and 1 had booking opening later. Label every event as upcoming, past, virtual or full, and take last year's dates down.
12 schools had both inspection reports and exam results we could verify, 4 had only inspection reports and 17 only results. These are different kinds of evidence. Give each its date, scope and source, and never present an award or an annual report as an inspection.
Only 3 of 60 schools had a working page in another language, while 26 offered guidance for families abroad. Only 1 of 64 named any AI crawler in robots.txt, the lowest of any industry we have checked. When we asked AI tools for an international school for a 10-year-old, one suggested a school whose entry starts at age 11, which may fit next year's intake but not this one. Write age at entry and intake year plainly.
The AI answers were single recorded answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini on 16 October 2026, not rankings. How we ran them is in we asked three AI tools about our own field.
We check that each fee says which year group, which campus, per term or per year, whether tax is included, and what costs sit outside it, from registration and deposits to lunches, trips and devices.
We check that age at entry, intake years, deadlines and the steps to apply are written on the page, so a family can tell whether their child fits this year or next.
We check that every event says whether it is upcoming, past, virtual or on campus, whether booking is open or waitlisted, and that last year’s dates are not still the first thing a parent sees.
We check that inspection reports, exam results and accreditations are each labelled with their date and scope, and that families abroad can find a page in their language and the right contact.
We plan and specify the search work for one campus and one intake at a time: fees, entry rules, deadlines, visits and the routes for families abroad. Your team or your web agency makes the changes, and the school approves every fact before it is published. We do not promise enrolments or that an AI tool will recommend you.
Send your website and the intake you most want families to find. We will reply with where you stand against the schools we checked, and the first thing worth fixing.
…it was worth gold!!Founder of Notum Learn, a SaaS company we audited