Top 5 Secrets every School Needs, to Build an Effective Survey for Parents

Mayowa
May 4, 2023
5 min read

How often does your school communicate with parents, and how do they do it? Do they just send out information without asking for any feedback or opinions? If that’s the case, then it’s time to take advantage of the digital means available to us and start using online surveys to gather valuable information from parents.

Surveys can be especially useful when building or updating your school website and other digital communications to ensure they effectively engage parents. Before starting, it’s important to plan and conduct a parent survey to understand their concerns and preferences. After all, parents are the most important audience for your school website, and getting their opinion and perception early on can make a big difference in creating an effective school website.

Parent Survey Checklist

When building a new school website, it’s important to start with a plan, and the most important people you want to involve during this survey planning phase are parents. They’re a crucial audience for your website, and gathering their perception can help make your school website more effective.

Parents play a crucial role in their children’s success at school. using technological means can help schools engage better with parents, understand their concerns, and improve their engagement. By using a simple parent survey program through email, an online survey service, or school website and social media, schools can improve parental engagement, community support, and save money. According to a recent global online survey, Social media and Social websites has become one of the most commonly used for engaging entertainment with most parent and adults, therefore leveraging on social media and website has come to be the most preferred method of school-to-home communications. To create an effective parent survey program, schools should follow these simple steps listed below when using email or social media.

1.Inform Parent on what they should expect:

As a school management When sending out a survey to parents, it’s important to emphasize just how vital their feedback is to the education experience of their children. Make it clear that their participation will help improve communication and the overall quality of education.

To maximize responses, send the email from a person, not the school. You could choose the superintendent, principal, or someone else who’s well-known in the community. Studies show that people are more likely to respond to an email from an individual than from an institution.

Another way to increase participation is by offering incentives. Consider giving away tickets to school events, games and excursions, or even a chance to win gift items. Everyone likes a chance to win something!

Lastly, keep the survey short and sweet. Parents are busy, so don’t overwhelm them with too many questions or take up too much of their time.

2. Make it short and simple

Clarity and simplicity are a great factor when setting up a parent survey. For beginners, give your survey audience an idea of how long the survey will take and the number of questions they want to answer. Everyone’s time is so compressed these days, and the last thing you want to do is make participation more than they’re willing to spare.
Make it friendly too. Use multiple choice, 1-5 rating scales, and short-answer format questions so your respondents can complete the survey easily. This makes it easier too for you to make sense of the results and execute them in practical, actionable objectives.
If you need help setting an online parent survey for your school, i recommend a leading Online survey website, Survey Monkey created by Dr. Hunter Gehlbach of Harvard Graduate school of Education.

3. Choose your word of approach wisely

With email and phone message being the simplest and most popular way for schools to reach parents, it’s important to make your survey worthwhile in other for it to get completed.

Hopefully your parents open all the email and messages they get on their devices, but by choosing inviting words of approach at the begining of your message and the subject line of your email you can greatly improve their participation rate. Also, keep the email message short and to the point, so you don’t dilute your message. Your goal here is to make your readers (the parents ) click the link to the survey, so don’t confuse them with exessive information.

Simply placing the link to your survey in between the message and email makes it easy for your reader to find the link.

4. Show appreciation for their participation

Make sure to follow up as soon as the survey is completed to thank your parents for participating. Some online surveys enable you to do this automatically and even personalize the message. Like the initial email asking them to participate, make sure the thanks comes from an individual among the school management, like the principal, head master or mistress.

5. Share Results in a Consistent manner

After getting the results of your parents survey in a tabular form which is the most recommended easier way of gathering results, it is best advised to share those results as soon as you can, so the parents wont feel like theyve just participated in a pointless activity.
These results should be shared with the same means at which it was gathered, which means if you gathered their feedback response through an email message, it is advised to share the results through the same means, additional platforms like your school website, social media and local community press should also be used to share your survey results at the appropriate time.
i recommend a post by Anne O’brien, a blogger for the Learning First Alliance, who elaborates more on the importance of school using surveys to communicate with parents, the post talks about how school managements needs to make the effort and invest in discovering what parents want to know about their children’s school.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Even if you’re satisfied with your school’s website, it’s important to check for common mistakes. These mistakes can drive visitors away and make it harder for them to use your site. Don’t be fooled by flashy design elements like rotating banners and large images. Instead, focus on what your visitors are looking for when they come to your site. For more tips on school website design, check out our previous post: 5 Key Elements to Keep in Mind for Designing an Effective School Website.

From designing a beautiful and user-friendly website to integrating features such as online forms and chatbots, we can help you establish a strong online presence that engages parents, students, and staff. Our websites are mobile-responsive, meaning that they will look great on any device, from desktops to smartphones.

If you’re interested in learning more Get a Quote Now. Our team would be happy to discuss your needs and provide a custom quote for your project.