Dunalley Primary School

Summary

Dunalley Primary School prides itself on providing a good education for all children, and on building positive relationships with the parents. To consistently carry out research and gather insightful real-time data, they use online survey software powered by SmartSurvey.

Using SmartSurvey has resulted in;

• Time saved on administrative tasks
• Cost cutting on admin staff
• Increased insight about children
• Greater parental feedback
• Easy presentation of results

About Dunalley Primary School

Dunalley is a Community School in Gloucestershire with approximately 370 pupils aged from 3 to 11. The leadership team at the school has been successful in adding improvements, and providing opportunities for progressing pupils’ overall development.

The school is solution focused and strives to create opportunities for all to improve, including pupils, staff and parents alike.

Challenges they faced

Dunalley is a growing school, with a class being added every year, which increases the amount of administration attached to collecting data. For example, the results from the annual parents’ survey consists of four A4 pages of data that historically took days to input manually. The key instigator for adopting the use of digital surveys was to save time as data is uploaded automatically.

We needed to work smarter and cut down on the time taken to do administrative tasks. I was aware of how powerful online surveys could be and believed using them could provide the solution we needed._{Hayley, Dunalley Primary School}

When surveying both pupils and parents, Dunalley’s objectives were to;

1. Save money on the process of collecting data
2. Reduce the amount of paperwork and inputting of data
3. Gain greater insight from pupils and parents

The SmartSurvey solution

Dunalley started using SmartSurvey at the beginning of 2017, following a recommendation from a colleague. To be compliant with data protection rulings, it was essential that all the information the school collected was stored on UK based servers. SmartSurvey’s solid policy for safeguarding systems and the guarantee that the data never left the UK meant that the surveys would meet this criteria.

SmartSurvey software is used to;

• Conduct annual end of year parent surveys
• Capture quick responses with one question surveys
• Survey staff for training
• Capture pupil views at the beginning and end of short courses
• Survey children about extracurricular activity

In addition, Dunalley Primary School plans to conduct a trial using SmartSurvey to send out ‘trip letters’. Without the risk of forms being buried at the bottom of a book bag, parents will be able to select children’s food preferences and make payments easily - at the end of the survey, the ‘Thank you page’ will automatically direct the parent to a secure payment site.

Results

Online surveys have helped provide valuable insight for Dunalley and, as a result, performance at the school has improved, meaning pupils are achieving more. A good system for tracking pupils’ progress has been introduced, which is used successfully alongside performance management and lesson observations, to identify opportunities for development.

Dunalley Primary School recently carried out their largest survey to date to capture parental views on school changes. By using online surveys they have cut the time spent inputting the data into spreadsheets and can easily track who has or has not replied.

SmartSurvey is immensely user-friendly and has made the presentation of results easy and very visual. It is one of the most powerful and simple tools to use

Plans are underway to start using online surveys to research the levels of swimming children have reached that will show the school which children need more support. In addition, questionnaires will be sent to ask children about extracurricular activities and which clubs pupils are interested in using.