How to create effective education surveys (with examples)
Create school surveys that capture student experience, teacher feedback and classroom outcomes.
Think about a few factors that impact student outcomes: Teachers and administrators. Course offerings and academic tracks. Family involvement inside and out of the classroom. Student resources. Social dynamics and the education community. Facilities and campus safety. Sports programmes.
How do you keep your school running smoothly? Education surveys are a great place to start.
Education surveys are structured questionnaires used by schools, teachers and researchers to collect feedback from students, parents and staff.
Keep reading to learn which questions to ask students, parents and faculty. You’ll also find education survey examples and tips for getting the most reliable feedback.
What are education surveys?
Education surveys are structured questionnaires used by schools, teachers and researchers to collect feedback from students, parents and staff.
These educational surveys surface insights on school climate, safety, course effectiveness, online learning and campus services. They help turn day-to-day observations into measurable data that support instructional decisions, programme improvements and academic research.
Accelerate student feedback with instant survey deployment
With SurveyMonkey Enterprise, your school or school district may be eligible to survey minors and manage student data securely and compliantly.
Why should you use education surveys?
Institutions of all sizes and types use education surveys to improve educational outcomes. Send surveys to anyone involved at your school to:
- Measure teacher and student satisfaction
- Understand parent engagement and priorities
- Recruit parents to volunteer in the classroom
- Analyse educational demographic information
- Track student habits and health
- Create interactive online quizzes
- Gain insight into school climate and bullying
- Get to know and support student learning styles
- Determine the effectiveness of online educational activities
- Conduct instructor and course evaluations
How do you create an educational survey?
Creating an education survey means defining your goal, choosing the right school survey format and writing clear questions that generate reliable student, teacher or family feedback.
The walkthrough below shows how each part comes together, from selecting a starting point to validating your survey results.
Use a customisable survey template
Teachers and school administrators often begin with an expert-written survey template, then adapt the template to fit the course, programme or study design they are analysing. Browse our education survey templates to find options for primary, secondary and higher education, including student surveys, course and instructor evaluations, and parent feedback forms.
When to use templates for research
Survey templates are especially helpful for pilot studies, departmental assessments and mixed-methods designs where you want reliable core questions and space for open-ended prompts. They also reduce Internal Review Board (IRB) review cycles because questions are already written to minimise bias.
Build your student surveys with AI
Have an idea for your survey, but no questions yet? Use Build with AI to automatically create a survey that meets your needs.
How to use prompts in Build with AI to create a student survey:
- Identify the goal: "Create a survey to understand student satisfaction with the new campus dining options."
- Define the audience: "The audience is undergraduate students at a large university."
- Specify content: "Include questions about food quality, variety, price and operating hours."
Once you submit your prompt, the AI will generate a complete survey draft, including recommended survey question types. Edit and optimise the survey to suit your needs.
Send your own survey in minutes
If you want to write your own questions, use SurveyMonkey to create a survey in minutes. Choose from different question types and write what you want. Or copy and paste your existing questions into your survey. We also have hundreds of prewritten education survey questions ready to drag and drop into your survey.
Education survey examples
We collaborated with the US Department of Education and the Harvard Graduate School of Education to design surveys that drive educational improvements. Here are a few of our most popular education surveys.
Parent survey for K-12 schools
Primary and secondary schools are collectively known as K-12 schools in the US. Use this template to survey parents on their thoughts, feelings and attitudes towards your school. You’ll also learn how parents engage with their children at home. This feedback can help you better support students and parents inside and out of the classroom.
Instructor and course evaluations
Are your university or college instructors meeting students’ needs? Send students an instructor evaluation survey template to learn their perceptions. Ask questions about instructors’ organisation, attentiveness, assignments and more.
Education demographics survey
Get to know your students and their parents. You can use an education demographics survey to learn more about their background, such as which languages they speak at home. The survey results you get can help you build an inclusive, supportive school.
Parent survey for special education
Send parents a survey about their child’s behaviours at home. Does their child struggle with certain tasks? Get distracted? How well do they manage their emotions? The more information you have, the better prepared you’ll be to support students at school.
Education survey templates
Education surveys can be used in a variety of situations, including assessing learning support and school environment. Our expert survey scientists created education surveys to address your interests and more.
Examples of education survey questions
Here are some examples of frequently used education survey questions. For more, check out our list of top student survey questions or search our Question Bank for hundreds of prewritten education survey questions.
What is your highest level of education survey question
If you’re collecting education demographics from students or parents, make sure you use the right questions and answer options. Here’s how to ask for an education level in a survey. Keep your question short and simple: What is the highest level of education you have completed?
Make the education level answer options as inclusive as possible. Our education level survey question covers each grade level, which is why we use the dropdown question type.
Make sure you include “Did not attend school” and allow people to indicate a partial college or postgraduate education.
What questions should I ask in a teaching survey?
Here are some teaching survey questions that’ll help you measure student satisfaction:
- How well did your instructor answer students’ questions?
- How comfortable did you feel voicing your opinions in class?
- What improvements would you make to the course?
- How likely are you to continue attending this university next year?
- How much do you think this teacher knows about the class they teach?
- How much does this teacher care that you are learning?
- Do you think this teacher teaches too quickly, too slowly, or at about the right pace?
Find more questions like these in our university student satisfaction, course evaluation and secondary school teacher evaluation survey templates.
Special education survey questions
Get to know your students and learn about their biggest needs and challenges. These special education survey questions can help you arrange resources and create educational experiences that will set students up for success.
- How often does your child struggle to get organised for school?
- When working on school activities at home, how easily is your child distracted?
- How well does your child manage their emotions?
- On average, how well does your child work independently on learning activities at home?
- How often does your child give up on learning activities that they find hard?
- How confident are you in your ability to help your child deal with their emotions appropriately?
Find more questions like these in our school programme fit and learning support survey templates.
3 tips for running effective education surveys
By following survey best practices, you can make it more likely that people will respond – and give you candid, thoughtful answers. Here are our top tips for education surveys.
1. Get creative to get more responses
Unfortunately, not everyone who gets your survey will fill it out. Busy students, parents, teachers and faculty members might want to give you feedback. But they close out of your survey, intending to respond later (and promptly forget). Use these tips to get people to answer your surveys:
- Students often juggle multiple email addresses and get a lot of spam. Try using other channels to get students to answer your surveys. Post your survey QR code to your learning management system or on your website. Send them a text with a link to your survey. Or set up a device for students to take surveys outside of the classroom, such as at a kiosk on campus.
- Set aside time for students to take your survey during class. This way, you’ll have their full attention and focus.
- Parents, teachers and faculty members might respond better to email. You can even automate email reminders for those who received your survey but haven’t taken it yet.
- Need to find participants for your academic research surveys? Use SurveyMonkey Audience for academics to find qualified respondents today.
Related reading: See more tips for using online polls for students
2. Put your survey to the test
Before you send your survey, make sure it’s easy to fill out and error-free. You can preview your survey and fill it out as if you were a respondent. If you want more feedback, you can share your survey with others for review. Here are a few things to look out for:
- Do your question order and survey logic make sense? For example, if a student only takes online classes, make sure you’re not asking them a bunch of questions about their on-campus experience.
- Check your questions to avoid the most common types of survey bias. This will help you get better, more reliable data from your surveys.
- Take your survey as a respondent would. How long does it take to fill out your survey? Are you asking a lot of open-ended questions, which require more effort? The easier you make it for your respondents, the more (quality) responses you’ll get.
3. Give context and follow up
Whether you’re sending your survey in an email or embedding it into your website, let your respondents know this important information:
- Who you are: Consider adding your school logo or colours, which looks more professional and can build trust with your respondents.
- Why you want feedback: People may be more likely to tell you what they think if they understand why it’s important. Also, be clear about your feedback deadline, especially if you’re using the survey to make a time-sensitive decision.
- How you’ll use the data – and whether it’s anonymous: You can enable anonymous responses and let people know their responses are anonymous, which can help you get more candid feedback.
- Next steps: Are you going to share what you learn? When? Your survey respondents might be more willing to give you their time if they know you’re taking their feedback seriously.
Build, validate and share your education survey
Education surveys work best when they’re easy to answer and grounded in what your school community cares about. SurveyMonkey brings those elements together through education survey templates, AI-assisted drafting and an expert-built Question Bank.
Ready to get started? We want to help your school score top marks SurveyMonkey offers discounts for students and educators.
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