Ofsted staff survey questions

The latest official Ofsted staff questionnaire asks 18 questions: one about your role, thirteen statements to agree or disagree with, and four optional free-text boxes. It covers leadership, workload, wellbeing, behaviour, safeguarding and professional development. Below is the full list, and how to run the survey in your own school. With School Surveys Essentials, you’re also able to add a positive question from our question bank to gain further valuable feedback from your staff.

What questions are in the Ofsted staff survey?

Management level / role
The school is well led and managed
Please share any further thoughts on how well led and managed the school is (free text)
All staff are treated fairly and with respect at this school
I am proud to be a member of staff at this school
Leaders are considerate of my wellbeing
Leaders take workload into account
Please share any further thoughts about whether leaders take workload into account (free text)
Pupils are safe at this school
If you answered that pupils may not be safe at this school, please can you tell us why this is? (free text)
The school deals effectively with any cases of bullying of pupils
Staff consistently manage pupils’ behaviour well
Leaders support staff well in managing behaviour
Please share any further thoughts about leaders’ support for staff with managing behaviour (free text)
The school is effective in supporting pupils’ wellbeing
Leaders enable staff to support all pupils (including those who are disadvantaged, those with SEND, and those who are known or previously known to children’s social care)
When pupils lack key skills, leaders take quick action to address them (for example in reading, writing or maths)
Leaders ensure that I have the professional development I need to make me more effective in my work

How quickly can I run the Ofsted staff survey?

Right away! You can run the full questionnaire for free with School Surveys Essentials. It takes about three minutes to set up, and you share it with staff by link and/or QR code. We also provide a printable poster with the QR code.

For schools who have a full subscription with School Surveys, many of them use this template regularly, or add some of these questions into their own schedule of surveys. They are able to add in questions of their own and we encourage them to include a positive response and open-ended feedback question to make the most of this opportunity to gain feedback from staff.

How will I receive responses?

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 the role type of the respondents. If you re-ask the same questions, the changes over time will also show.

Our reports are designed so you can share with confidence and think about how you respond to the feedback you’ve received.

Will it be anonymous?

Yes, in most cases. Our system is designed to be used to run anonymous surveys, but there are two caveats to note:

Individuals may sometimes identify themselves in the way that they answer free text questions.
In a small staff team, the role question may make some people identifiable – and if someone thinks they can be identified, they may answer differently. It is an optional question and you may wish to emphasise this to staff or remove it entirely if it doesn’t feel appropriate for your school.

The csv file from the survey is available once the survey closes. This allows you to track how individuals have responded across the survey; it does not identify who they are, beyond those caveats noted above.

How do I increase the staff response rate?

At School Surveys we offer links, QR codes and printable posters that you can share and stick around the school to maximise engagement.

We usually suggest that you run a staff survey for about a week – it can be a much shorter window if you are allocating dedicated time for it to be completed, for example five minutes as part of a staff meeting.

You can keep an eye on response rates in real-time in the portal, and extend the survey as necessary. Simply change the close date, and send a reminder.

We know that the biggest impact for response rates is the confidence people have that their responses will be listened to and acted upon, so being clear with staff about how you plan to respond to their feedback will encourage them to participate.

When you get to sharing results, we believe that acknowledging areas that need attention but aren’t your priority is just as important as telling people about the changes you are already making. This can be hard but it’s all part of building a healthy culture with honest communication about your priorities.

How does my school compare to others?

With a full School Surveys subscription, you get full benchmarks to all your staff survey questions, helping you get that vital wider perspective on how you are getting on.

Staff benchmarks draw on our Teacher Tapp data, provided by 10,000+ teachers answering daily survey questions in the Teacher Tapp app. Because our data set is so big, we can compare your results to those from staff working in similar schools, matching by phase and FSM quartile.

We’ve made one of these benchmarks available for people using School Surveys Essentials, so you will be able to compare your school to other similar school on how well led and managed your school is (question 2).

Benchmarks are particularly helpful when you’re thinking about which results to celebrate and which areas you need to make change in. With School Surveys, you can also see your results over time, helping you to review and celebrate progress.

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 to use for free in School Surveys Essentials, from School Surveys by Teacher Tapp.