Parent Survey Template for Schools and Childcare Programs
Fourteen questions a school or childcare center can send to families this week. Answer it here first, then open it in the editor. The hard part is not the questions. It is which parents answer.
- 14questions
- 4 to 5 minto complete
- One per childnot one per family
- School or centerone instrument
Which parents answer a parent questionnaire, and which do not
Parent response is the lowest of any group a school surveys, and the families it hears from least are not a random half of the roll.
| What was measured | Parents who answered | What sits beside it |
|---|---|---|
| New York City School Survey, 2015-16, elementary school parents | 64 percent[1] | Teachers about 85 percent on the same administration[1] |
| The same survey, middle school parents | 57 percent[1] | Middle school students 87 percent[1] |
| The same survey, high school parents | 35 percent[1] | 91 percent of high schools missed a 70 percent parent return[1] |
| National Household Education Survey 2023, a national address sample fielded by the Census Bureau | 53.3 percent overall[2] | NCES reports the bias it detected as low[2] |
| Illinois 5Essentials, the reporting threshold rather than a result | 20 percent required[5] | Students and instructional staff 50 percent[5] |
Same survey, same schools, same week: staff and students answer easily, parents do not, and the shortfall grows as children get older.[1]
Who is missing matters more than how many. In a four country European study of 14 year olds, immigrant parents returned the parent questionnaire at roughly half the rate of other parents in three of the four countries: 22 percent against 41 percent in England, 43 percent against 80 percent in the Netherlands. The children whose parents did not answer were scoring lower at school.[3] The families heard from least were the ones whose children were doing worst.
Recruiting harder raises the number without correcting the sample. An Australian school study briefed the education department, principals, teachers and office staff and posted a card to every parent. Response moved from 69 to 76 percent, and a more socially advantaged sample still turned up in both rounds.[4]
The 14 parent survey questions, and the childcare swaps
Every question, its scale, and what a low answer is telling you. Copy one block, copy the lot, or open the template.
The two items that set up the rest
A stage router, then the rating you need from every family.
- Which stage is your child in this year?First. Without it a low score belongs to the whole school rather than to one phase, which is the level nobody can act on.
- Overall, how satisfied are you with the school this year?Second, not last, so a parent who stops after two questions has still left the headline.
Communication, and reaching somebody
The four items a school can change fastest.
- The school keeps me informed about what my child is learning.Not the same as sending a newsletter. Low here beside a high reply score means the school is reactive rather than silent.
- When I contact the school, I get a reply in a reasonable time.Reasonable is the parent's definition on purpose, because that is the definition that decides whether they contact you again.
- I know who to contact when I have a concern.The cheapest thing here to fix: a low score is a list of names nobody has published in one place.
- The school explains how my child is getting on in terms I understand.About the report card and the conversation, not the child. Low here is a vocabulary problem in your reporting.
Safety, welcome and fair treatment
Provision, answerable from the school gate.
- I am confident my child is safe at school.Confidence in the school, which is not an incident count. Read the two side by side.
- My child is happy to go to school.The one item that reaches something a parent sees and the school does not: the child at the door in the morning.
- The school deals with behavior fairly.Fairly, not strictly. Split it by stage rather than reading a whole school average.
- I feel welcome at the school.A building question as much as a culture one, and the families who never come in are the ones to ask.
Being heard, and being reached at all
Whether raising something changes anything, and whether you can be reached.
- The school takes my views seriously when I raise something.Different from knowing who to contact. A parent can know exactly who to call and still believe it goes nowhere.
- Information from the school reaches me in a language I can read comfortably.The reach item. A family scoring it low has read everything you sent all year at a disadvantage.
- How would you prefer the school to contact you?The only item that changes next year's send list. Read it against the families you heard nothing from.
One open answer, about the school
One box, pointed at the school rather than the child.
- What is the one thing the school could do better?One thing, not a list, so the answers can be counted. A form is the wrong route for anything needing a named person this week.
Swap-ins for a daycare parent survey or an early years center
Same instrument, different vocabulary: read school as center.
- The daily update tells me what my child actually did today.Replaces the learning item. A daily report is the early years version of a progress conversation.
- I know which staff member is responsible for my child each day.Replaces knowing who to contact: in a center that is a person on a shift, not a role in an office.
- Settling in was handled well when my child started here.An addition, not a swap. It is the only judgement a family in its first term can make with confidence.
- The center tells me enough about meals and snacks.Kept apart from sleep, because a center can be good at one and poor at the other.
- The center tells me enough about sleep and rest time.The other half of the same day, asked on its own so a low answer points somewhere.
- Fees and session times are explained clearly.No equivalent in the school version, and it is the item that decides whether a family stays another term.
Editing it. The set is already loaded, so you can create a poll or survey from it and rewrite any stem first. Keep the stage question at the top, or results cannot be split by phase. US districts file this instrument under family engagement survey, the phrase to search for published question sets.
What is not in here, on purpose. Nothing asks you to describe, rate or report on your own child. Every item is about the school: what it tells you, how it treats families, whether you can reach somebody. No income, ethnicity or name box.
Sending parent surveys for schools and childcare centers
Three decisions that change who answers. What every survey shares, whoever answers it, is in the guide to survey research design.
One survey per child, not one per family
A parent with a child in kindergarten and one in eighth grade has two different answers, and averaging them loses both. The published university instrument for this job asks families to fill one in per child.[8] It fixes the arithmetic too: the denominator is children on the roll, not households.
Send it in the languages your families read
More than one in ten US public school students is an English learner, three quarters of them Spanish speaking at home.[7] English only does not reach the whole roll, and districts already have an obligation to communicate with parents who are not fluent in English in a language they can understand.[6] Have a person translate it: that guidance cautions against automated web translation.[6]
Send it by more than one route, then count who is missing
One channel reaches only the families that channel already reaches, so use the office list, the class teacher and a paper copy at pickup. Then print the response rate on the front of the report, split by stage: a 30 percent return read as the view of the school is the error this page is about.
Whichever route you use, families read one sentence before question one: individual responses stay confidential, and results are reported as a group.[8]
What a parent satisfaction survey cannot tell you
Two limits no amount of care removes, and one rule for reading year against year.
It cannot tell you what the parents who did not answer think. That is nonresponse bias, and no weighting rescues it on a sample the size of one school. Publish the response rate beside every number, split by stage.[1]
It cannot rate a teacher. A parent sees the messages, the homework and their child at the end of the day: a real account of provision, not of teaching. A low stage score is a conversation with that stage, not a line in an appraisal.
Comparing years only works if you keep things still. Change the questions, the send list or the reminders and the movement can be any of the three. Keep the ten agreement items fixed and add new ones after them.
Parent survey FAQ
What is a parent survey?
A short survey a school or childcare center sends to the parents and carers on its roll: communication, safety, who to contact, whether their child is happy to go in. About the school, not the child.
How many questions should a parent survey have, and how long should it take?
This one has 14 and takes four to five minutes; a published university instrument for the same job runs 42 items at up to ten minutes.[8] Length is a reach decision here, not a style one.
What parent response rate should we expect?
No reliable public figure exists for schools in general, so treat any page offering one as guesswork. What exists is specific: 64, 57 and 35 percent for elementary, middle and high school parents in New York City in 2015-16,[1] 53.3 percent for a Census run national household survey in 2023,[2] and a 20 percent threshold before Illinois reports a parent result at all.[5]
Is a family engagement survey the same thing?
Near enough, and so are a parent feedback survey, a parent engagement survey, a parent involvement survey and a parent satisfaction questionnaire: they name this instrument. Family engagement survey is the US education sector phrase and the one to search for published question sets, because much of the free material is filed under it.
When should we send it?
A parent survey for school runs once a year. An end of year parent survey gives families a full year to judge and the school a break to act in before the next intake. The same questions in the same month every year beat a better survey in a different month.
Parents see the classroom secondhand, through a child and a report. Where you want the account from the people actually in the room, the teacher feedback form asks them directly.
Methods and sources
What this template is based on
The instrument is ordinary school and childcare language, grouped into the five things a family can judge from outside the building: communication, safety and belonging, being heard, being reached, and one open answer. Its length is an argument rather than a style choice: the two studies of parent nonresponse both found the missing families to be the less advantaged ones,[3][4] so 14 items sits well under the 42 item, ten minute published school instrument.[8] The reach section is built from the New York City School Survey, the 2023 National Household Education Survey, a four country study of parent nonresponse and an Australian recruitment trial.[1][2][3][4] The reporting threshold is Illinois state policy.[5]
Question licensing
Nothing licensed is reproduced. The well known school parent instruments carry a mix of positions, from free with attribution to authorized only with a book purchase to copyright asserted on the questionnaire itself, so every question here is written for this page and the named instruments are pointed to rather than reprinted. The Ohio State catalogue is the source for the length, the one per child rule and the confidentiality line, all of which are described rather than copied.[8] The ten language figure is the published product fact from Panorama and is used as a reference point for the field, not as a claim about this template.[9]
Limits and disclosure
The New York City figures are one district in one year and the four country study is European secondary schools, so neither is a forecast for your school; they are the only measured parent response rates in public that are worth quoting.[1][3] No general parent response rate exists, and this page publishes none. The language obligation is stated once because it changes how the survey is sent; it is not legal advice and it is not a compliance guide.[6] No item on this page belongs to a clinical or screening instrument, and none is intended to be answered about an individual child.
SuperSurvey makes the editor this template opens in. Everything on this page works with or without it.
References
- Merrill, L. Understanding School Survey Response Rates. Research Alliance for New York City Schools, NYU Steinhardt. Data year 2015-16 NYC School Survey. steinhardt.nyu.edu
- McQuiggan, M., et al. Parent and Family Involvement in Education: 2023 (First Look), NCES 2024-113. National Center for Education Statistics, US Department of Education. Fielded by the US Census Bureau on a national address sample. nces.ed.gov
- Engzell, P. and Jonsson, J. O. Estimating Social and Ethnic Inequality in School Surveys: Biases from Child Misreporting and Parent Nonresponse. European Sociological Review 31(3), 2015, pages 312 to 325. doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcv005
- Schilpzand, E. J., Sciberras, E., Efron, D., Anderson, V. and Nicholson, J. M. Improving Survey Response Rates from Parents in School-Based Research Using a Multi-Level Approach. PLoS ONE 10(5): e0126950, 2015. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Illinois State Board of Education. Illinois 5Essentials Survey, reporting thresholds. isbe.net
- US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, and US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Dear Colleague Letter: English Learner Students and Limited English Proficient Parents, 7 January 2015. ed.gov
- National Center for Education Statistics. English Learners in Public Schools, Condition of Education, updated May 2024. nces.ed.gov
- Boone, B., Wellman, M. and Schenker, V. Family Engagement Surveys and Checklists. Center on Education and Training for Employment, The Ohio State University, posted by Ohio Families Engage. ohiofamiliesengage.osu.edu
- Panorama Education. Family-School Relationships Survey, product page and FAQ. panoramaed.com
Send it to the families on your roll
Fourteen questions about the school, one per child, four to five minutes. Open it, swap in the childcare wording if you need it, send one link.
Use this template