Matt Skilton: School Culture and Student Survey

As part of my Deputy Principal role I am currently writing a report for our Board of Trustees on what we call 'The Heart of the School'. The report looks at various aspects of the school culture with particular interest in reviewing how things are going, if strategies are working as intended and what we could perhaps be doing better for our kids. Put simply we want to reflect and review if our school culture is continuing to have a positive impact for students and their learning.

When writing such a report it is important to also consider the views of the students! To do this staff surveyed their students by having them reflect and feedback thoughts on 3 questions.

1. What do you like about Muritai School?
2. What do Muritai teachers do to help you be the best that you can be?
3. What could be different to make Muritai School an even better place?

Implementation of the survey was kept very simple. Junior teachers scribed student ideas and thoughts while the Y4-8 teachers organised their classes in to small groups. Scribers recorded group responses ensuring everyone contributed to each of the questions. I then collected each class’s feedback and have presented the findings for each question using the illustrative online resource 'wordle'. I have since shared the respective 'wordless' with teams and have displayed them in the staffroom.

Feedback from staff about the student survey process was very positive. General feeling was:

There was high level of positive feedback about student-staff relationships which is extremely reassuring.
Students enjoyed being able to have their say.
Helped confirm staff feeling that the school is a safe, supportive and enjoyable place to be for the children.
There were some interesting ideas for future improvement that teachers said they wouldn’t have thought important.

I have included 2-3 examples of the 'wordles' below.

What Y5/6 like about our school: