Running an Ofsted parent survey
The latest official Ofsted Parent View survey asks 10 questions. They cover whether your child is happy and safe, behaviour, bullying, SEND support, communication, how concerns are handled, and whether you would recommend the school. Below is the full list, and how to run the same survey yourself through School Surveys Essentials. We’ve also made our some of our positive questions and open feedback questions available to you through School Surveys Essentials so you can gain even more insight from your parents.
What questions are in the Ofsted parent survey?
- My child is happy at this school
- My child feels safe at this school
- The school makes sure its pupils are well behaved
- My child has been bullied and the school dealt with the bullying quickly and effectively
- For parents with a child with special educational needs and/or disabilities only: my child has SEND, and the school gives them the support they need to succeed
- The school communicates well with me about the things I need to know
- When I have raised concerns with the school they have been dealt with properly
- When the school makes decisions, it has the child’s best interests at heart
- The school gives my child the right support to enable them to learn well
- I would recommend this school to another parent
How does my school compare to others?
School Surveys has comparison data for all of the questions in this survey, through our data set from schools already using our service.
We’ve made that comparison available for question 2, for everyone who runs their Ofsted Parent Survey through School Surveys Essentials. You can see how likely your parents are to report that their concerns have been dealt with, benchmarked against responses from parents in other schools. If you have a full subscription with us, you can compare all your answers with other similar schools, matched by phase and FSM quartile.
When should I run this survey?
Parent responses are one of the many things about an inspection you cannot influence on the day. By the time inspectors are reading them, they are what they are.
Running these questions yourself, in a normal term with nothing at stake, tells you where you actually stand. If communication is the weak spot, or if concerns are not being handled the way you thought, that is something you can work on – but only if you know about it.
You can run the full survey free with School Surveys Essentials at any time and as frequently as you would like.
How do I increase my response rate?
Parent surveys usually get lower response rates than staff ones, and a low response rate makes results hard to interpret correctly – the parents who feel strongly, in either direction, are the ones most likely to reply.
What tends to help:
- Share the survey in multiple ways – with School Surveys, you have links, QR codes and printable posters to put on the school gates
- Send parents the link separately – our data suggests parents are most likely to complete surveys when a dedicated message is sent, rather than only shared within a longer newsletter or message
- Tell them afterwards what you heard and what you are doing about it – this one does the most work for the future. Parents who saw something change after the last survey are far more likely to answer the next one.
How do I receive and share the results?
Responses appear in real-time as they are submitted, viewable in your online portal with School Surveys. A final report is also sent to your inbox automatically as soon as the survey closes.
We show the responses in graph and table format, giving you the visual picture of the main findings alongside the full data. Open-text questions are summarised to give you the main themes, with the full sets of responses also available online and in the appendices of the PDF reports.
You can do further analysis in the online reporting area – for example, using the filters to show results according to responses from parents of pupils in different year groups. If you re-ask the same questions, the changes over time will also show.
Our reports highlight the main findings from your results and allow you to explore the data, so you can share with confidence and think about how you respond to the feedback you’ve received.
Is it really free?
Yes! School Surveys Essentials allows you to run the Ofsted surveys whenever you need to. It is our free level of access and there is no limit to when or how often you run these surveys.
If you want more benchmarks, or want to use School Surveys for other surveys you run throughout the year, then you can move onto a paid subscription and benefit from all our templates, tools and school surveying expertise. Paid access also allows you to write your own questions. Email us on hello@schoolsurveys.com to change your access, or book a quick call with us if you’d like to see more of the site or ask any questions.
The other Ofsted questionnaires
All three are available free in School Surveys Essentials, from School Surveys by Teacher Tapp.
