Form questions
Parent survey questions for a school
Twenty questions is an annual round and ten is the version families finish. Three should never be cut: whether the parent knows what their child is learning this term, whether they know who to contact when something goes wrong, and how safe their child seems to feel at school. The first two are fixable this month and the third is the one that matters.
A parent survey has to work for a family answering it on a phone in the pickup queue, which rules out most of what a school would like to ask. These questions cover communication, how the child seems, homework and school life, and they name nobody.
The questions
About your family
What year level is your eldest child at the school?DropdownRequired
One response per family, cut by the eldest child stage. It identifies no student.
How many children do you have at the school?Single choice
How long has your family been at the school?Single choice
First year families answer the communication questions very differently.
Did you choose this school or was it your local option?Single choice
Ask it neutrally. It explains a great deal of the variation in the rest of the survey.
Communication
I know what my child is learning this termRating gridRequired
Row one of a five point agreement grid.
I hear from the classroom teacher often enoughRating gridRequired
Row two.
I know who to contact when something goes wrongRating gridRequired
Row three, and the cheapest row on the whole survey to fix.
The school tells me about changes in time to plan around themRating gridRequired
Row four. Notice, not frequency, is what working parents are asking for.
Reports tell me something I did not already knowRating gridRequired
Row five.
Which channel do you actually read?Single choiceRequired
Newsletter, app, teacher emails, text messages, the noticeboard. A single forced choice.
Have you contacted the school this year about a concern?Single choice
Yes and it was resolved, yes and it was not, no. Pairs with the who to contact row.
Your child at school
How safe does your child seem to feel at school?Single choiceRequired
A five point scale. Asked as an observation a parent can honestly make.
How does the homework load feel?Single choice
Far too little through far too heavy, so both failures are visible.
How often does your child talk about school at home?Single choice
Does your child have at least one friend they rely on at school?Single choice
Yes, not sure, no. A single question that predicts a great deal.
Is your child challenged enough by the work?Single choice
Not enough, about right, too much. Extension and support are the same question asked in two directions.
School life
Which events did your family attend this year?Multiple choice
Interviews, open morning, working bee, concert, sports day, or none of these.
What stops you attending more?Single choice
Work hours, short notice, younger children, transport, or nothing.
How well does the school include families who cannot attend during the day?Single choice
What one change would improve the school for your child?Long text
Say in the label that staff and other students should not be named.
Which questions to make required
Four things are required and nothing identifies a student. The eldest child year level is required because a result that cannot be split by stage is useless to a school leadership team. The five communication rows are required because the grid is the survey. The channel question is required because the answer determines how the next survey is sent. The safety question is required because a school that does not ask it has not run a parent survey. Homework, events and the open question all stay optional.
- What year level is your eldest child at the school?
- I know what my child is learning this term
- I hear from the classroom teacher often enough
- I know who to contact when something goes wrong
- The school tells me about changes in time to plan around them
- Reports tell me something I did not already know
- Which channel do you actually read?
- How safe does your child seem to feel at school?
The form built from these questions
A static copy of a form built from part of the bank, exactly as it renders.
How to change this for a different setting
A secondary school. Primary wording about the classroom teacher does not survive a timetable with eight teachers, so replace it with questions about the year level coordinator and about whether the parent knows who is responsible for their child overall. Add questions about subject choices, careers advice and how the school communicates about assessment, and drop the talks about school at home question, which most teenagers will not oblige. A childcare or early learning service. The unit is the room rather than the year level, and the communication questions become daily rather than termly: whether the parent knows how the day went, how sleep and meals were handled, and how the handover at pickup works. Add a question about settling in for new families, and ask it separately from everything else. A school in a community with many languages at home. Ask, early and plainly, which language the family would prefer to receive school communication in, and offer the survey in those languages rather than asking about translation in English. Add one question about whether the family has ever needed an interpreter for a school conversation and whether one was offered, because that answer is usually the whole communication finding.
Questions people ask
One response per family or one per child?
Per family, recording the eldest child year level. Per child doubles the count for larger families and quietly weights the whole result towards them, which matters in a school where family size varies by community. Say which you want on the welcome screen or you will get both.
Should parents be asked about individual teachers?
No. A parent survey measures the school as a family experiences it, and naming staff turns an improvement instrument into a complaints process without any of the protections a real one has. Put that instruction above the open question rather than hoping it is understood.
How do you reach families who do not read email?
Ask which channel they read, then send the next survey through it. The channel question is also the explanation for a low response rate this year. A paper version at the office counter, typed in under the same year level, reaches the families an email survey never will.
When should a parent survey run?
Once a year, in the middle of a term rather than at the end of one, and never in the same fortnight as reports. Reports colour every answer in the survey, and a survey sent alongside them measures the report. Mid term also leaves time to act before the year ends.
What response rate should a school expect?
Twenty to thirty five per cent of families is normal for an emailed annual survey, and higher where the survey is short and the school has published what changed last time. A rate under fifteen per cent usually means the survey went out on the wrong channel rather than that families have nothing to say.
Is it safe to ask about safety?
Yes, phrased as how safe your child seems to feel, which is an observation a parent can honestly make rather than a claim about what happened. If a family raises something specific in the open question, the school has to have a route for that, and the survey is not it.
What should be published afterwards?
A short note in the newsletter with the three lowest scoring rows and what will be done about them, by when. Families answer surveys that visibly changed something. A school that publishes nothing gets the same result as a workplace that publishes nothing, which is a smaller survey every year.
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