Stakeholder Feedback Hub
Empower your school leadership with this evidence-informed stakeholder feedback guide
Run the Survey
Maximise survey responses, drive positive change and transform engagement through effective data collection.
How do we design a survey?
The design of your survey is an integral part of a successful stakeholder feedback exchange. This is the tool you’ve chosen to figure out the key elements related to your goal, so it must be purpose-driven, well-rounded, and provide you with the types of data you are looking for.
Launch the survey!
Once you have your team on board, goals set, survey designed, and logistics planned out, you’re ready to launch your survey! In your communications to respondents, include:
Recognise that these are extra minutes you’re asking from your community’s busy schedules. Seeing the larger goal and why you’re asking to do this task will help build motivation around completing the survey. Match your tone to the context around the survey depending on if it is an exciting and inviting opportunity or something that calls for a more professional and measured tone to match the weight of the situation.
- Is the survey anonymous?
- What’s the deadline for completing the survey?
- Where to find the link?
- Give all of the practical information to your respondents so that the process is as clear as possible, including what will happen with their data and how you plan to use it to make decisions going forward. Let them know who to contact in case of any additional questions.
Monitor the survey
What’s a good response rate? At Edurio, we like to say that gathering at least half of your stakeholder voices is excellent! Striving for a 100% response rate is often unrealistic and there’s no point in setting yourself up against an almost impossible goal. Keep in mind, the response rates can differ among each of your organisation’s groups – staff, pupils, parents, governors, and trustees. If you have run a survey for the same respondent group before, aim to have a slightly larger response rate the next time, as you may have better insight into getting them to respond.
The averages and ranges we have seen for Edurio-facilitated surveys:
A note about parent respondents: Parents are one of the hardest respondent groups to reach and measure. Define your achievable response rate, considering how many parents/carers you want to respond (one response per child or separate responses from main carers), what to do in cases where two children from the same family attend the school, etc.
At Edurio, we suggest inviting parents to complete the survey once for each child, meaning we would see one response for each pupil in the survey results. This is especially important in a case where parents have multiple children attending the same school, but the experiences with each child are different – trying to answer for both and finding the middle can risk results ending up being muddy.
If you see that the response rates after the first week are below 20%, talk to your team to understand what could be the reason and if you’re able to mitigate that. It might turn out you need to provide more information about the survey or extend the timeline for completion.
How to maximise the response rate?
Now that you have a rough idea of what response rate you could achieve for each respondent group, let’s talk about how you can maximise your response counts while the survey is live.
Clearly explain the importance of the information you are trying to collect. If possible, give examples of how you’ve used the results before, like You said/We did, “In the last survey you said XXX, and we did XXX.”
We all digest information in different ways. Utilise most channels you have at your disposal to reach each respondent and to make sure your message is heard. Your communications setup could include:
- email sent to all respondents
- physical posters put up in schools
- leadership teams reminding staff/parents to share their voices in regular meetings
- sending out internal reminders using internal message boards
- add a personal message from the head/CEO (ex. on video) to emphasise that this is not just a tick-box.
You can dedicate 15-20 minutes during staff or parent gatherings so anybody who hasn’t had the time to answer the survey questions, has it.
Reach out to special helpers to get involved by helping with communication and by motivating respondents to participate in the survey.
If you’re running the survey together with your partner schools, start up a friendly school competition. Who can take pride in being the most active school or team? Share the response rates with school leaders if you’re doing this in a group, or create a league table so everyone can follow along with progress.
You can also take the friendly school competition (see the previous point) to the next level and offer a prize to the group with the most respondents. It could be something delicious, a monetary prize for collective goods or anything else your community would appreciate. Be mindful, however, that this does not turn completing the survey into a transactional process, so maybe keep the prize a surprise for later!
FAQs from respondents
Prepare yourself for possible questions from respondents about the survey. Here are some questions respondents frequently ask about Edurio-facilitated surveys:
- Is this survey really anonymous?
- Why do you want to know my [age/gender/sexual orientation]?
- Won’t you be able to tell who I am from my answers?
Emphasise once again what your goals are and that the survey is not intended to place blame in any direction but to open up communication and plan for positive changes. Consider compiling FAQs from the pilot group who tested the survey before the launch, especially if there were any questions that came up more often. You can include some prepared answers in the initial communication about the survey.
Close the survey
The survey has closed! You’re one step closer to seeing what kind of feedback your respondents gave. Before you go ahead and analyse the results, take a moment to reflect on the survey completion process itself and to thank your respondents.
What to do after the survey has closed?
It may take a few weeks or months to work through all of the insights in your survey results. To have everybody on the same page, communicate with your respondents right after the survey is closed:
Your community has spent their time sharing their thoughts. Thank them for their time, effort and feedback given. Let them know they’ve been heard! This will go a long way.
Celebrate the response rate, acknowledging all the people who took part in the survey. This can help build excitement around the collaborative work everybody has participated in. Remind people about the survey topic and themes that you asked them to respond about.
It’s important that respondents know the results will truly be analysed and used, as this is the reason people took the time to fill in the survey in the first place. Give a brief plan for what’s happening next – it can include the planned timelines or just the next few phases. Think:
- analysing the results
- setting priorities
- sharing the results and next steps
Let respondents know who they can reach out to if they have any further questions or comments about the survey or the next steps.
Key terminology
Change agent: Someone who is taking the time to study and guide the successful process.
SLT/Exec Representative: Senior Leadership Team, Executive Team. Depending on the structure of your school or multi-academy or single-academy trust, the leadership team structure may differ.
Stakeholder Representative: Staff, parent or pupil representing the group for your project
Materials & templates
Four informational summary resources accompany this chapter of the hub. You can share and adapt the materials by providing a link to the original documents and indicating if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner but not in any way that suggests that Edurio endorses you or your use.
LETTER TEMPLATES
Introducing the survey
EMAIL TEMPLATE
Thank you email
POSTER TEMPLATES
Introducing the survey
POSTER
“Thank you for your feedback!”
All additional resources & templates are available for free: The page is password-protected; you may retrieve the password by completing the form above. After form completion, an email containing the password will be delivered to your inbox.
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