The Surveying the School Community document provides survey information and 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. 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 (Microsoft Word) of the paper based survey *: for parents, students (upper primary and secondary) and school staff.
* Please Note: You should save the files below to the desired location and open them from there rather than open the file direct from the link. There is a known Microsoft Office problem (which we can't address) that affects some computers causing the computer to hang. Alternatively you can right click on the link and use the "Save Target As" function to save the file to the desired location.
All three versions have essentially the same structure and content, but each has been modified to reflect the viewpoint of the person that will complete the survey. 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.
To further support this process a new online survey facility, known as "Survey Tool" can now be accessed via Portal Services. The online surveys have the same content and structure as those available in the paper format. Schools have the option to survey their school community using the new online survey facility, the paper based version or a combination of both. An overview on initiating an online satisfaction survey can be viewed via the following link - Instructions. It is important to note that if you intend using a combination of the online and paperbased surveys that the questions in the paperbased surveys aren't modified in any way. The ability to customise the surveys will be made available in the future.
Having collected as many surveys as possible from the sample group, a school may then process the data by hand, use a computer program or the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet ** (SchoolSurvey.xls) that will do the necessary “number crunching” and generate graphs or use the new online survey facility. Recent communications to schools regarding the new online facility outline the numerous reasons why the online facility is now the recommended tool to process the survey data.
** Please Note: You should save the spreadsheet to the desired location and open it from there rather than open the file direct from the link. There is a known Microsoft Office problem (which we can't address) that affects some computers causing the computer to hang. Alternatively you can right click on the link and use the "Save Target As" function to save the file to the desired location.