The Surveying the School Community document provides survey materials that can help schools find out how parents, students and staff view their performance. It outlines the place and purpose of the survey, and guides its administration and data analysis. The document also highlights some limitations of the survey that schools should bear in mind.
Schools may choose to use or adapt the survey according to their own needs. They may also choose not to use the survey at all.
Information that schools derive from this survey is for their own use. It is anticipated that it will become part of the performance information used for school improvement purposes.
Topics covered in the document include:
There are three versions (MS Word) of the survey: for parents (106 KB), students (upper primary and secondary - 102 KB) and school staff (128 KB).
All three versions have essentially the same structure and content, but each has been modified to reflect the viewpoint of the person that will fill it out, the staff version contains an extra cluster of items relating to working relationships. The consistent structure and content across versions of this survey will enable schools to compare the perceptions of one group with those of another.
Having collected as many surveys as possible from the sample group, a school may then process the data by hand or it may use a computer program to help. A Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet (SchoolSurvey.xls - 438 KB) will do the necessary “number crunching” and generate graphs.