Bringing your school online has never been easier, thanks to visually appealing, functional education themes suitable for WordPress websites. The best education WordPress themes allow you to create a compelling digital landing space for anything and everything related to your school.
Whether that’s hiring new team members, raising money, or meeting enrollment goals, your website is here to help. Not to mention, a school or academic website must be easy to use and maintain.
We’ve curated the top 35 education themes for WordPress websites so you don’t have to waste your time or energy on less than the best. Let's talk about the best education WordPress themes, and help you pick the right theme for your institution.
How to Choose the Right Education Themes for WordPress Sites
- Think about your users first.
- Make contact information easy to find.
- Highlight your community.
- Choose a friendly and simple design.
- Share need-to-know information first.
- Choose the plugins you need.
- Plan for fundraising on your education website.
- Ask for feedback.
- Optimize for mobile.
To create an excellent website for your school, you should take a look at what other educational facilities use for their website. This can give you a feel for what features and plugins you may need as you build your website. For instance, schools often use a calendar to share events and deadlines with students and parents.
Here are some other suggestions to help you figure out which WordPress themes for academics are worth your money.
1. Think about your users first.
Every school has a lot of information to share and many different audiences to please. You'll want to appeal to academic peers or potential donors with your site, but your first step in planning should consider the people who use it most – usually students and their parents. To juggle all of these needs, you’ll have to figure out what you want to prioritize.
Start with a clear structure, and make sure that your home page makes important updates easy to find. Try to limit the number of steps your most frequent users must take to get the answers they are searching for.
If you haven't built a website before, this guide to the user experience can help you understand what to plan for.
2. Make contact information easy to find.
Every person on staff at a school has a specific purpose. But some are easier to get hold of than others. As you build your site, ensure it's easy for students, partners, and parents to identify and contact every team member. That’s why, when using education themes, you should look for one that makes contact information findable.
3. Highlight your community.
Photos and videos are an easy way to share what's special about your school with the world. It’s also a compelling way to showcase the community that your school builds, which really sets it apart from competitors. So, ensure that the education WordPress theme you choose has lots of space for images.
If you don't already have a lot of images to share, contact your student body. User-generated content can add personality to your site. It can also give members of your academic community a feeling of pride and shared ownership.
4. Choose a friendly and simple design.
Your WordPress theme should have a design that matches your school's unique branding. It should also be relatively straightforward, and provide a friendly digital landing place for your users. Check to see if you can customize the colors of your WordPress site theme. The best education WordPress themes are highly customizable, so this shouldn’t be too tricky! You'll also want to pick a font associated with your branding, but make sure it's readable on the computer.
5. Share need-to-know information first.
A website is more than a promotional tool or social center for your campus. Students aren't always great at sharing information from their teachers and school admins with their parents.
A website makes it easy to share important updates about directly:
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School policies
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Tuition
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Supplies
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Upcoming field trips
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Test dates
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Assignments
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Days off and breaks
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Sporting events
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Registration
6. Choose the plugins you need.
The right education theme will work with the plugins you need. WordPress plugins can make access and automation of various processes run smoothly.
For example, you might need to add PDF forms to your site. This can make it easier and more secure for students to submit paperwork or teachers to submit job applications.
So, as you plan, think about ways to streamline school processes when you go digital.
7. Plan for fundraising on your education website.
The right education WordPress theme won't just be useful for the school, it needs to help build your future.
Raising funds for schools is a never-ending process. It's also complicated. Development teams need resources to pull in students, alumni, and local community members.
Do you want to add an online store for school merchandise? Enable online donations? Or create a subdomain for tracking a fundraising campaign? You can do so with the help of education themes for your WordPress site. Plus, using a theme to set this up is much less time-consuming than asking your IT department to attempt to build it.
As you pick your theme, make sure that it has all the features you need to launch and maintain these efforts.
8. Ask for feedback.
If your school developed a committee to launch your new education website, think about adding parents or alumni to the committee. You might even add a student.
Gathering useful feedback may seem like a hassle initially, but it will save your institution time and money. You're creating a site for a diverse community of parents, students, teachers, administrators, donors, and more. So, you want feedback early and often to ensure you're on the right track. Plus, it comes back to that sense of ownership.
9. Optimize for mobile.
71% of mobile phone users check their phones within 10 minutes of waking up. That includes your students and parents. This means that a responsive WordPress site is essential.
A responsive education WordPress theme will look great on a range of screen sizes and devices. This means that your community will spend more time using your website and get more value from it.
Now that you know what the best education WordPress themes must have, let’s dive into some of our top picks.
Top Educational WordPress Themes
WordPress is an excellent option if you’re looking to build an education website for a few reasons. With so many education themes, beginning is easy because it requires minimal investment and only takes a couple of hours.
But, educational websites need to have some custom features and designs. You can't use a simple blogging theme for an educational institute because they won't have the features you may need, like:
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Secure form submission
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Online payments
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Learning plugins and integrations
To help make the process simple for your school, we rounded up some of the best WordPress themes to instantly create a great educational website.
This list includes paid and free education WordPress themes to cover the needs of various schools and academic institutions. That said, this list isn't for everyone.
If you're looking for an educational WordPress theme for your online course, check out this list. And look here if you want themes for elearning.
(Psst: Several of these themes will work for those looking for a learning management system (LMS), too. This list of education themes is primarily for building a WordPress site for schools, colleges, and universities.)
Free WordPress Education Themes
- Eduma
- Ocean WP
- Astra
- Neve
- Edu Mag
- Lectura Lite
- Zakra
- Educational Zone
1 . Eduma
Best for: Any kind of educational program, training center, or online course program
Why we like this education WordPress theme: The theme focuses on user experience and it comes with a great design along with an easy-to-use interface. You can showcase the available courses to users on the site's homepage so that you can drive in traffic. It offers 30+ demo websites and is compatible with both WPML and Elementor. The theme is also trusted by more than 35,000+ educators.
The header section of the theme looks stunning with the slider, and you have the tools to change the settings and parameters to meet your needs. This theme offers some amazing demo designs so that you can get started with your site instantly. The site is also widget-ready and high-resolution.
It also offers you event options so that you can promote all your education-related events right on your website and keep your users updated.
Other useful features:
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Fully responsive and mobile-friendly
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Mega menu for the navigation section
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Works well with BuddyPress and other helpful plugins
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Excellent customer support
2. Ocean WP
Best for: Schools who want to create a custom site
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This free WordPress theme offers several demo sites for schools and colleges to build their websites. The customizable menu and header choices make it easy to customize your site and give it whatever look you want. It’s also an excellent option if no one on your team has coding experience, as you don’t need any coding knowledge to get started.
We also love the seven customizable header styles, three mobile menu styles, and four-page title styles. This theme is an excellent option if you’re looking for a highly customizable base theme that you can personalize to your school’s unique needs.
Other useful features:
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Wide range of page and blog templates
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Range of type and color settings
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WooCommerce integration
3. Astra
Best for: Schools who want to create a custom site
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This theme is flexible and easy for beginners to use. It supports various plugins and integrations to make things easier for you. With these plugins, you can share your site on social media, sell products for fundraising, translate to other languages, and more without ever having to code. Another differentiating factor of Astra is that it’s incredibly lightweight — which makes a big difference when you are creating an efficient site.
Other useful features:
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Optimized for SEO
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Unlimited color and typography variations
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Customizable and lightweight
4. Neve
Best for: Schools who want to create a custom site
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This is a crisp, user-friendly WordPress theme for your educational site. The theme supports various plugins and offers great features to help you create a great site for your visitors.
You can start with the free theme, and if you want something more education-specific, you can upgrade to the paid theme. It’s highly flexible, offers high-quality support if you have any questions, and a clean, user-friendly design.
Other useful features:
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Seamless LMS integration
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Sleek design
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Quality support
5. Lectura Lite
Best for: Schools, universities, and kindergartens
Why we like this education WordPress theme: Lectura Lite is a great educational WordPress theme. It's perfect for colleges, courses, tutorials, and other educational websites.
Because the theme is compatible with the drag-and-drop Visual Composer plugin, you can create your own custom layout without any coding. It’s sleek,
Other useful features:
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Responsive design
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Translation ready
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Custom widgets
6. Zakra
Best for: Schools who want to create a custom site
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: Using their EduSkill template, you can quickly create a professional site. You can also use this lightweight theme with a custom page builder to create a custom site for your school.
Other useful features:
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SEO friendly
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Mobile responsive
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Compatible with major WordPress plugins
7. Educational Zone
Best for: All educational institutions
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This is a perfect theme for schools, colleges, training centers, and other educational startups. This theme has a great design and all the features you need to create a successful website. One reason it stands out is that the flow of the theme is incredibly intuitive, which allows it to offer an optimal user experience. It has a minimal and classic design, which makes it functional and user-friendly for a wide range of school types.
Other useful features:
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Personalization options
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SEO-optimized
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Retina-ready design
Paid Education WordPress Themes
- Education Pack
- Kalium
- Los Ninos
- Kingster
- Academica Pro
- Buntington
- Capital
- Guru
- Skilled
- Fleming Pro
- Masterstudy
- Clever Course
- Education Academy
- Invent
- WPLMS
- Grand College
- Divi
- Preschool and Kindergarten Pro
- Enfant
- Superwise
- Academist
- Nayma
- School
- Eikra
- Ed School: Education WordPress Theme
- Ultra
- SeedProd
8. Education Pack
Best for: A range of learning institutions, including design schools, language schools, dance academies, or driving schools.
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: It’s a complete learning management design that offers you all the features to create a top-notch site. The Education Pack theme is fully responsive and retina-ready, ensuring that your site looks great on all devices. It’s also high-resolution and well-documented, making it an overall excellent choice.
This theme has a custom framework that will help you make your site look exactly how you want it to. You can also get the Slider Revolution plugin, which you can use to create enticing slides for your site to attract your users' attention easily. Plus, with so many demos already available, getting started is simple.
Other useful features:
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One-click demo import feature
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Easy to use without any coding
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Clean design
9. Kalium
Best for: Schools who want to create a custom site
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This theme offers extensive pre-built site features. It also has advanced theme choices with various custom widgets, menu types, and included plugins. It works seamlessly with popular page editors including Elementor and WPBakery. There are also 25 demo options you can customize.
Other useful features:
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Custom fields
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Extensive font selection
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Professional layout design
10. Los Ninos
Best for: Children’s education, kindergartens, or daycares
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This premium WordPress theme has online course functionality to support remote education and schedules for classes, clubs, or lessons. Four pre-made websites make it easy to start, with colorful and engaging designs that you can customize for your school, daycare, or kids club. The theme is also updated regularly, and allows you to easily make an online shop for your educational institution, too.
Other useful features:
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Dedicated Programs post type and Groups page for preschool and daycare institutions, as well as groups and play schools
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A functional blog for news or events
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WooCommerce integration for online stores
11. Edu Mag
Best for: Educational sites, as well as online magazines and online newsletters
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This is a simple WordPress theme for educational institutes that want a professional website. It has a smart design that attracts users' attention and keeps them engaged.
Other useful features:
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Social media widgets
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WooCommerce compatible
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Translation tools
12. Kingster
Best for: Universities, schools, and learning management systems
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This is a powerful theme for educational institutions. It comes with well-designed demos that are perfect for any university or school.
From creating faculty pages to an "About Us" page, you can create as many pages as possible to showcase your facility. It comes with a high-quality course search system and a dynamic calendar.
You can also add pages to inform your students about upcoming activities, new events, and other subjects.
Other useful features:
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Excellent support
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Seamless integration with LearnPress LMS
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Extensive header choices
13. Academica Pro
Best for: Education and nonprofit websites
Why we like this education WordPress theme: Academica Pro from WPZoom is another WordPress theme for educational institutes that allows you to customize every section to meet your needs. There are four unique page post formats, so you can choose one that feels right for your school’s branding.
This theme is created with HTML5 and CSS3 code to make it a high-performing SEO friendly design. It also offers you built-in SEO settings to optimize your site. We also love this theme’s visual customizer which makes building your site especially easy.
Other useful features:
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Featured slider section on the homepage
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Custom widgets for the home page
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WooCommerce integration
14. Buntington
Best for: Schools and universities
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: You can create an unlimited number of courses on your site with a downloadable document option. This makes it easy for students to access assignments. It also features a completely manageable event section where you can publish upcoming events for your school or college.
This theme lets you create amazing galleries and sliders for your site to promote your courses. It also comes with useful shortcode options to insert different functions into your pages with just a click.
Other useful features:
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Flexible and customizable site framework
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Reusable content library
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Easy-to-use visual homepage builder
15. Capital
Best for: Educational and nonprofit organizations
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: The Capital theme offers you event choices as well so that you can manage all the events related to your educational institute without needing an external tool.
This theme is also easy for less tech-savvy users to edit and update, thanks to the virtual customizer. Another reason this theme is an excellent choice for your educational institution is that you can make virtually every aspect of it your own. It also boasts SEO-friendly code.
Other useful features:
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Clean and professional design
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Responsive and retina-ready
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SEO friendly
16. Guru
Best for: Learning management
Why we like this education WordPress theme: Guru is one of the most comprehensive learning management WordPress themes. It gives you a complete student and teacher profile option. This theme also includes extended profile management so that each user can manage their functions individually. Plus, the theme offers a calendar plugin that enables you to easily add events to your site.
You also get a complete lesson management system with this theme, and you can track course progress. There is also an easy quiz system for the students.
Other useful features:
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WooCommerce, BuddyPress, and Event Calendar integrations.
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Useful pre-built features like course management and instructor profiles
17. Skilled
Best for: Schools, universities, and other learning management
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: It also allows you to create teacher profiles, user profiles, lesson management, a quiz system, a questions system, events, a course progress tracker, analytics, and call-to-action banners. Plus, the theme is high-resolution and widget-ready. It’s also well-documented.
With its fantastic support for the WooCommerce plugin and others, it’s easy to add an online store. The theme also offers one-click demo import, which makes building your site especially easy.
Other useful features:
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No coding required
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Can add LMS functions with a plugin
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Gamification options
18. Fleming Pro
Best for: School, kindergarten, and nonprofit websites
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This is a quick and simple solution for schools looking for a website theme. Separate demos for universities, schools, and kindergartens make setup fast. You’ll get unlimited usage, one-click updates, and priority support when you download this theme.
This tool is also GDPR friendly, with regular updates that can help you keep your website working and looking great.
Other useful features:
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Responsive and mobile-friendly
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Automatic updates
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Easy to customize
19. Masterstudy
Best for: Learning management system, also good for specialty and online schools
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: You can showcase different lesson types, advanced quizzes, and completion certificates in this all-in-one tool. This theme also makes it easy to showcase the teaching staff in a visually appealing layout. The theme also lands itself on our list of the best WordPress themes for academics because it is compatible with Elementor for easy-building, offers 16 demos, and includes nine languages.
The Masterstudy theme also comes with a fully-featured events section to help you showcase upcoming events.
Other useful features:
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Translations for nine languages
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Course building options
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Limited need for extra plugins
20. Clever Course
Best for: Any education site, including schools and universities
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This theme comes with an easy-to-use interface to create online courses and quizzes. The users of your site can take an online exam, and you can review and return their results quickly. The high-resolution, widget-ready theme also offers multiple sliders you can use to engage visitors.
You can also use this theme to sell online courses or to create an online education website. To sell courses online, you can integrate your site with Paypal, Stripe, or Authorized.net and receive payments from users.
Other useful features:
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Advanced theme options panel
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Page builder
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Demo import feature for quick and easy setup
21. Education Academy
Best for: Institutes and academies
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This education WordPress theme offers you custom post types for class listings, staff members, facilities, and galleries.
The pre-designed page templates make it simple for you to customize the look and feel of each page for your school.
Other useful features:
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Helpful integrations, like Gravity Forms
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One-click auto-install feature
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Drag-and-drop capabilities
22. Invent
Best for: Schools, colleges, and universities
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This theme offers you eight custom post types so that you can post any content you wish to publish. You can also customize the look and feel of the theme with unlimited colors, header styles, 500+ Google fonts, 1500+ retina icons, and more. There are also 30+ page builder widgets, eight custom post types, and parallax scrolling options.
Other useful features:
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Powerful theme options panel
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SEO-optimized design
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60+ useful shortcodes and a shortcode builder
23. WPLMS
Best for: Learning management systems
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This theme comes with a great-looking user profile dashboard for students as well as teachers. It also offers you a professional layout to showcase your courses with a star rating system. This makes it easy for users to check and read about their courses.
The theme package also includes custom plugins built specifically for the theme to create a complete learning experience. It’s one of the best education WordPress themes because it offers plenty of demos and integrates with Elementor. The theme also works effortlessly with the WordPress default Gutenberg editor.
Other useful features:
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Offline functionality
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Mobile app and download choices
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Fully compatible with WooCommerce, BuddyPress, and bbPress
24. Grand College
Best for: Schools, universities, and colleges
Why we like this education WordPress theme: Grand College is one of the most popular and widely used educational WordPress themes. It offers everything you need to create a professional education site. There are six post types, a drag-and-drop page builder, unlimited sidebars, and more than 450 fonts available for you to use.
It offers you six-footer layouts and fifteen predefined background patterns. It also offers custom post types that are specially created for education-related websites.
Other useful features:
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SEO-friendly
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Feature-rich admin panel
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Built-in translator
25. Divi
Best for: Schools looking for a custom site design without a huge investment.
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: Divi is one of the overall most popular WordPress themes, and luckily, you can customize it to work well for an educational website. Unlike many of the other options on this list, it’s not exclusively made for education themes, but you can use it for such.
Why? For starters, you have different header designs to choose from that will help you create a unique design for your site. You also get stunning designs for single pages and product landing pages to magnify your revenue.
This theme uses one of the best drag-and-drop website builders. You can use this plugin to create a unique design for your site and ensure that you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to create a custom look for your site. Divi’s an excellent pick for any website, and an educational one is no exception.
Other useful features:
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Powerful security options
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Useful modules
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Responsive design
26. Preschool and Kindergarten Pro
Best for: Primary school websites
Why we like this education WordPress theme: Along with educational sites, this theme can be a great choice for childcare and other child-related businesses. It has a great design and powerful customization to make your site right for your learning community.
You can easily customize the theme by using the live customizer. Change the color scheme, headers, and fonts without writing a single line of code. The one-click demo installation feature will help you to start your site fast. There are also eight unique header options, seven custom pages, and the theme is responsive.
Other useful features:
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600+ Google fonts
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Helpful page templates
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Slider options
27. Enfant
Best for: Kindergartens, primary, and music schools
Why we like this education WordPress theme: The theme comes with the Visual Composer drag-and-drop website builder plugin. This can help users to create unique custom pages without any coding. This plugin makes customization very easy. Plus, the theme is high-resolution and widget-ready.
This theme also offers unlimited colors to help you change the look and feel of your site to match your education brand.
Other useful features:
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Event planning and management
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Translation ready
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Speed-optimized
28. Superwise
Best for: Educational sites and Google Classroom users
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: The theme comes with free installation, clear instructions and maintenance, and six months of free support. It’s also well-documented and responsive.
The school niche pages give you over 20 options to create unique content for your students, parents, and teachers. It also includes several custom forms made for educational purposes.
Other useful features:
- Google Classroom integration
- Great support
- SEO-friendly
29. Academist
Best for: Education and learning management
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This simple education WordPress theme comes with course-specific layouts and features. The theme is also responsive and offers a variety of home and inner pages for you to consider.
This theme includes a course showcase, events calendar, and an online store to help your school manage every audience and goal. It offers a powerful admin panel, useful shortcode, custom post formats, and much more.
Other useful features:
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One-click site demo
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Extensive plugin compatibility
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Customizable mega menu
30. Nayma
Best for: Schools that want a custom site
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: Nayma offers a classic website layout with powerful features. It's a simple and responsive WordPress theme that will make your site look great on all devices.
You can use this theme for any educational site. Plus, the portfolio functionality with this theme can help any school improve community outreach.
Other useful features:
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Extensive plugin library
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Modules that make customizing simple
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Responsive design
31. School
Best for: Schools and classes with a lot of information to share, including daycares and educational day programs
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This theme offers you custom post types for education-related details, unlimited color options, retina font icons, custom widgets, and a lot more. The theme is also suitable for multiple languages.
It has a great-looking design that will easily attract any user to your site; it’s created with HTML5 and CSS3 code to make it a high-performing design.
Other useful features:
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Open hours page for school schedule changes
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SEO friendly
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Optimized for page speed
32. Eikra
Best for: Schools, colleges, universities, and training centers
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: You can keep your learning community engaged and active with event and blog pages. This theme also offers instructor profile pages and spaces for reviews.
The WooCommerce plugin can help you accept secure payments for enrollment, donations, and school swag.
Other useful features:
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Responsive design
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Zoom and other powerful integrations
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Drag-and-drop page builder
33. Ed School: Education WordPress Theme
Best for: Elementary, middle, and high schools
Why we like this education WordPress theme: This theme comes with 23 custom widgets specifically for education sites. It offers custom forms, social sharing, and options to create teacher and tutor profile pages. Plus, the theme is compatible with Elementor.
Other useful features:
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One-click demo install
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Support for included plugins
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Extensive page-building tools
34. Ultra
Best for: Schools, colleges, and universities
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: This simple theme gives your school a chance to highlight what makes it unique. With bright colors and extensive layouts for sliders, posts, and layouts, you can easily customize the pages your school needs.
Other useful features:
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Mega menu
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Demo sites for quick setup
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Responsive and lightweight
35. SeedProd
Best for: Schools that want a custom site
Why this education WordPress theme is great for schools: SeedProd’s WordPress theme gives schools that need a custom site with unique functionality an easy, no-coding option. This theme has pro blocks, smart sections, and over 200 templates to help you get started. From there, you can customize your site to look and function exactly how your school needs it to.
Other useful features:
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SEO optimized
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Premium integrations
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Drag and drop page builder
Put Your Education WordPress Theme to Work
Now that you’ve chosen the perfect theme for your education site, it’s time to launch your website. A new and improved website for your school could bring more traffic, more enrollments, and more interest in your amazing community.
You've made the online experience better for your campus community. It’s time to keep planning for the future. How else can you make a difference? How can you keep growing?
This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.