Parent satisfaction with the school
An anonymous read on how parents rate the school: one overall score, seven sides of school life in a single matrix, willingness to recommend and a list of what to fix first.
Who it is for and when to run it
School leaders usually run this at the end of the year or of a term, once parents have formed a view. It is also useful before a school self-evaluation or a governors’ or board meeting where parent opinion needs to be shown in numbers.
The survey is anonymous: no names, no contact details. That is deliberate. Nobody writes honestly about teaching quality or how teachers treat their child under their own name.
One link goes to every class teacher. The year-group question splits answers into three stages, so you do not need separate forms.
What the template is made of
Every block in the order it sits in the builder. Branching decides which of them a given person actually sees.
- Rate the school Text block
The opening screen promises anonymity and says leadership sees only the summary. How candid the answers are depends on this sentence.
- What year is your child in? Dropdown
Year group as a dropdown with three bands: 1–4, 5–9, 10–11. Bands rather than single years, so a family cannot be identified in a small school.
- Your overall rating of the school Star rating
The overall star rating comes before the details, so people answer with their first impression rather than adding up small complaints.
- How satisfied are you? Matrix
A seven-row matrix: teaching, how teachers treat the child, safety, the building, meals, clubs, keeping parents informed. Five columns including «Don’t know», so a parent with no view on clubs does not pick a random score.
- How likely are you to recommend the school to friends? NPS (0–10)
The 0–10 recommend question is a standard Net Promoter Score. It measures willingness to recommend the school, which is a stronger signal than being satisfied.
- Where do you usually hear school news? Single choice
Where parents hear school news: the online diary, the class chat, the website, their child or the class teacher. The answer tells you where announcements actually land.
- What should the school improve first? Drag to reorder Ranking
A drag-to-reorder ranking of what to improve first. When everything matters, you still have to choose, and ranking forces that choice.
- What would you change about the school? Long answer
A closing open question on what to change. Concrete proposals that were not on any list end up here.
How to adapt the template
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Swap the matrix rows for what your school wants to measure: exam preparation, pastoral care, after-school provision. Keep it under eight rows or the grid gets long on a phone.
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In a large school where single years stay anonymous, you can put individual year groups back into the dropdown.
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For a nursery or kindergarten, change «school» to «setting» in the wording and the rows to staff, outdoor time and activities. The structure holds.
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Do not add name or phone fields. The moment you do, the promise on the first screen stops being true.
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Embed the survey on the school website with the website widget and share the same link in class chats.
How to read the results
NPS is the share of 9–10 answers minus the share of 0–6 answers; 7–8 are left out. Look at it by stage: primary and upper years often differ, and a whole-school average hides that.
In the matrix, look for rows where «Mostly dissatisfied» and «Dissatisfied» add up to a large share. «Don’t know» is also a signal: lots of it on the clubs row means parents simply have not heard about the clubs.
The ranking reveals priorities that ratings miss. Meals can score average and still come first on the «improve» list.
Compare with last year using the same form. Changing the wording breaks the comparison, so edit the template once, before the first run. For more on the metric see NPS without lying to yourself.
Common mistakes
- Promising anonymity while asking for a class that is the only one in its year. The answer then points straight to a family.
- Asking teachers to have parents fill it in «while I wait». Ratings turn polite and useless.
- Collecting answers and never sharing the outcome. Tell parents briefly what you learned and what will change.
- Comparing your score with numbers from other schools found online. Methods differ; compare the school with itself.
Questions about the «Parent satisfaction with the school» template
What questions go in a parent satisfaction survey for a school?
An overall rating, ratings for teaching, how teachers treat the child, safety, the building, meals, clubs and communication, a 0–10 recommend question, a ranking of what to improve first and an open question on what to change. The template has all of these.
How do I keep a parent survey anonymous?
Do not ask for names, contacts or anything that pins down one family, such as a class that is the only one in its year. Say it is anonymous on the first screen. The service itself does not ask respondents for their name.
How do I calculate a school’s Net Promoter Score?
Take the share of parents who answered 9 or 10 and subtract the share who answered 0 to 6. The result runs from −100 to 100. Track it year on year with the same wording and by school stage rather than as one number.
Similar templates
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First-grade parent questionnaire
The teacher gets to know the family: what the child can already do, what they enjoy, who picks them up and what worries the parents.
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Settling into kindergarten
A parent form for the first weeks of kindergarten: sleep, appetite, the morning goodbye and what helps the child settle.
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School meals survey
A survey on the school canteen for parents and pupils: how often they eat there, what gets in the way, taste and portions.
Do not start from an empty canvas
Open the catalog, take the closest template and rewrite the questions for your job. Five minutes instead of an hour.