Frequently Asked Questions for parents, staff and students
As part of our continuous effort to improve ACT schools, each year the Education Directorate invites all parents and carers, school staff and students in years 4 to 12 to give feedback through the School Satisfaction and Climate Survey.
The survey opens on Friday, 18 August 2023 and closes on Friday, 8 September 2023.
Your responses will help your school to identify what it does well and how it can improve. The data will also be used to underpin school improvement practices and inform government priorities, as well as in research projects and longitudinal studies aimed at improving the quality of education services in the ACT.
The survey is administered via Qualtrics, an online survey platform, and is accessible on any mobile device. The parent survey should take 5-10 minutes to complete. The staff survey should take 10-15 minutes to complete. Students complete the survey as a classroom task, which should take 15-20 minutes to complete. Year 7 students will also be asked to complete a voluntary health survey, the Year 7 Health Survey, that we are conducting for ACT Health; these questions should take an additional 10-15 minutes to complete.
In addition to items developed to measure satisfaction, the survey includes a school climate module that forms part of a longitudinal study being conducted in partnership with researchers at the Australian National University (ANU). The student survey also includes additional questions related to student wellbeing.
This year, parents and carers are being asked questions to help the Directorate collect some data for improving the complaints management system. Additionally, there are some new questions related to career education services, work exploration activities and vocational learning opportunities available at the child’s school, and a few questions on the experience of transitions from one educational setting to another. An additional question on life satisfaction has been added to help the ACT Government to understand the wellbeing of the ACT community.
Key elements of school climate include school identification (a sense of belonging and connection to school), academic emphasis (support and encouragement of learning and success), relationships (feeling valued and respected in dealings with others) and a sense of shared mission, rules and processes in the school, which are important indicators of educational outcomes and quality of the learning environment.
No, your participation is entirely voluntary, but we do hope you will help. It is important that as many students, staff and parents and carers complete the survey as possible to ensure the results accurately reflect the views and experiences of our whole school community.
At the start of the student survey, student identification numbers will be used to confirm the identity of students and enable survey responses to be linked over time and with administrative and performance data. Connecting data in this way will help researchers to assess relationships between improvements in school climate and educational outcomes and enable a better understanding of patterns over time. Any personal information supplied will be handled in accordance with the Information Privacy Act 2014. Details about how personal information is stored and used are available in our Privacy Policy (available on the Policies page). Your responses will only be reported and used in aggregate with responses from other parents and carers, school staff and students. No personal identifying information will be provided to any school or college.
Yes. At the beginning of this year's Parents and Carers Survey you will have the option to select to complete the survey in alternative languages (Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Urdu, Vietnamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Spanish, Telugu, French and Italian). A shortened paper-version of the parent survey is available in the following languages: Dari, Dinka, Farsi, Karen, and Mon; to request one contact the front office of your school or email EDUSurveys@act.gov.au.
A survey invitation, including a survey link, will be emailed to all parents and carers and school staff. Genuine survey invitation emails will have the title "The 2023 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey is now open!" and will be sent from EDU Surveys & Evaluation with 'from' address EDU@qualtrics-survey.com. If parents and carers did not receive the survey invitation, contact your child’s school and they can provide you the alternative link. If you are school staff and didn’t receive the survey invitation, email EDUSurveys@act.gov.au to request one. Students will be advised by their teacher when their roll/class group is scheduled to take the survey during class.
Parents, carers and staff can opt-out of future emails about the survey by clicking on the link at the bottom of their survey invitation. Parents and carers who do not want their child to complete the student survey or the Year 7 Health Survey should contact their school’s front office so that their child can be excluded.
If you have been employed, enrolled or associated with your school for less than 4 weeks, we ask that you do not complete the survey.
Not if you are able to express your views in one survey. However, you are free to do so if your experience of different parts of the school is different; for example, your children may be on different campuses of the same school. We will ask you a question at the end of the survey about whether you want the survey to count for your other children at the school.
Yes, the survey results will be published on the Publications page. Distribution of school level results is decided by the principal.
Most sections are compulsory. However, we have attempted this year to include more flexibility in the survey.
Yes, there is an option to go back to the previous questions and edit the answers. However, once you have submitted the responses you cannot reopen to edit.
Yes, we can send a retake to the individual. We will need contact details to do this e.g., your name and email address. Please send them to EDUSurveys@act.gov.au.
The survey link that is distributed to students is generic. However, it is necessary for students to verify their identity by entering their student ID number at the beginning of the survey.
Adults who are listed as the top two priority contacts for the child in the schools’ record system will receive a survey invitation. If you don’t receive the survey invitation, contact your school’s front office.
Students receive their invitation email directly from the school or will be given a link to the survey during class. Parents and carers and staff survey invitations will be sent directly through Qualtrics.