School Guide wins Nominet Internet Award


SchoolGuide.co.uk, the UK’s best school guide, was awarded a prestigious Nominet Internet Award at a ceremony held at The British Library in London on 4th July. Celebrating the internet as a force for good, these annual awards recognise UK businesses, charities, individuals and public and private sector organizations that are making a difference on, or through, the internet.

School Guide was shortlisted in the category of Digital Innovation in Public Service from hundreds of sites across the UK and took the Runner Up award for its work helping parents to easily access and understand official school data.

Lesley Cowley, CEO of Nominet and one of the top 5 most influential women in UK IT according to Computer Weekly, opened the awards saying that she was proud to be part of an event that highlighted the positive power of the internet in this country and celebrated some of its very best websites.

"For those of us involved in the internet in the UK it remains a source of some frustration and irritation that the good side of the internet doesn’t always get the good press it deserves," said Lesley in her pre-dinner speech. "In fact we recently commissioned some research that strongly suggests that the British media ignores the brighter side of the internet. An analysis of 1,000 articles published in the past year revealed that less than a quarter of mentions of the internet were positive. The most frequently mentioned topic was ‘online fraud'.

On the other hand, we also recently carried out an opinion poll that gives us a very different perspective of the impact the internet has on people’s lives. Out of a sample of more than 5,000 people over the age of 13, 98% said that the internet has helped them in everyday life."

Since it launched in May 2013, we hope that School Guide has helped many parents in the "everyday life" task of finding the best school for their child. Never easy; always important,
we aim to make the important process of finding information on local schools and comparing their data as straightforward as possible.

Not that it is hard work going to an awards ceremony in one of the UK's most breathtaking buildings and meeting the shortlisted teams behind some of the country's most positive websites. Lesley Cowley used three words to sum up those crowned winners: inspiring, innovative and impressive.

For more information or images from the Nominet Internet Awards, please contact [email protected]