Staff surveys for schools
Simple to use, low-cost surveys for Primary and Secondary Headteachers to solicit feedback from teachers and support staff.
Ofsted look for evidence of regular staff surveys, and they are the most effective and robust way to learn what your staff think.
Get StartedDo you run regular staff surveys? It is good practice to do so and Ofsted will notice if you don’t.
Here’s the latest Ofsted inspection handbook, which mentions staff surveys several times:
This isn’t just a box-ticking exercise. You can use a staff survey to inform other parts of the inspection too. For example, our survey will help you understand how well your staff understand your vision for your school, something Ofsted wants to know about:
Our survey can form part of your self-evaluation, helping to ensure it is rigorous and accurate, which Ofsted expects:
(The question set we use is one of the most respected and rigorous in the world, relied on by almost all branches of the UK Civil Service from the Cabinet Office to the DVLA. We are using it under licence from the Cabinet Office.)
Ofsted expects that leaders at outstanding schools use the views of staff to inform a deep, accurate understanding of their school:
Formal, regular surveys of staff help build trust and motivation, which is crucial for your school to be Outstanding:
How SchoolStaffSurveys works
1 Sign up
It's free to try everything out, then £50 per survey you run. You can run them as often as you like. Or never again if it isn’t your cup of tea.
Sign up here2 Share the survey
We’ll create a unique link which you send to your staff.
3 Collect responses
Staff complete the survey confidentially on any computer, tablet or smartphone. There is no limit to the number of responses you receive for each survey. The price is per survey, not per response.
4 Review the data
You can review the responses as a page of beautiful graphs. Share with staff and governors and anyone else, or no-one else, entirely up to you.
Here are 7 reasons why you might not have done rigorous staff surveys before:
“Too expensive”
Lots of commercial providers want to sell you a truckload of expensive support services alongside their surveys. We just do surveys, and do it really well.
“Too hard”
Deciding a set of rigorous questions is very hard. Skip the hard work and use the world-renowed UK Civil Service Staff Engagement survey questions (used here under Open Government Licence from the Cabinet Office).
“The Ofsted staff questionnaire does the job”
It doesn’t, really. And it only scratches the surface, designed to help the inspector know if there is serious trouble amongst your staff, but it is not sufficiently detailed or rigorous to really be used as an ongoing tool.
“Obtaining responses is too hard”
Nope: just email your staff a special link and they can complete the questionnaire online in a few minutes. Works on any computer, tablet or smartphone with an internet connection.
“Collating and interpreting the responses is too hard”
Nope. With SchoolStaffSurveys.com you’ll get smart graphs, in the same familiar style as Ofsted’s ParentView graphs.
“I don’t know what to do with the findings”
Yes, you do. If you have got this far, you are an experienced school leader. It isn’t rocket science. Try it out and you’ll soon see which areas need your attention, and which aspects are humming along nicely.
“I don’t have the budget”
You do. Your school spends a few hundred thousand pounds a year on staff salaries, spending £50 on helping you manage them is well worth it.
P.S. 10 more reasons to use SchoolStaffSurveys.com
- Free to try and low cost to run (fixed £50 per survey, not per staff member)
- Collect unlimited responses to each survey
- Safe, secure, everything backed up
- No contract, just pay as you go
- SchoolStaffSurveys was set up by an active school governor (former Chair of Governors who oversaw a school’s transition from RI to Good, through four different Headteachers)
- Staff surveys are important for Ofsted
- Quick and easy for staff to respond on any computer, tablet or smartphone
- Responses presented as easy-to-interpret graphs, in a similar style to the Ofsted ParentView survey
- We use industry-standard 256-bit encryption to keep your data safe
- Outstanding schools regularly survey their staff. Join them.
P.P.S. Still not convinced?
Read on. Staff surveys build trust and engagement. This is important for lots of reasons:
Staff satisfaction
Have you ever met a great teacher who hated their job? If your staff are happy and engaged they are much more likely to become great teachers.
Innovation
Staff who feel engaged are more likely to be prepared to try, and suggest, new approaches and techniques.
Retention
Teachers who leave a school often don’t tell you much about why. Find out before people are thinking of leaving what their concerns are.
Recruitment
If you build a reputation as a school that listens to its teachers, you will find it easier to attract the best talent. If you want to, you could even publish your survey results for prospective candidates to read.