Student Attitudes to School - does it tell you anything about a school.

[wysiwyg]

It wouldn't change my mind as I want to maximize the time children are not in school - so the nearest walkable school is a massive plus, it is also a bilingual school (is a state school) which I think is a massive plus and we wouldn't get elsewhere.

The questions that they are answering are not really about 'hating' school - and looking at the way the study is designed I don't think you can totally discount the results.

Is more that this just adds to the gut feeling that I have about the school being very good academically (although it is rated lower than similar schools in subjects other than English and Maths) which is less important to me than how the kids feel about school and learning. Hopefully the open evening on Tuesday might change that, conversations with the few other parents I have had do tend to be very results focused, partly due to the demographic of the area I think.

[Beach Mama]

From a teaching perspective, the results tell you about as much as Naplan and about as much as how a child was feeling on the day of the survey as well as how well they could read and interpret the questions which are worded in a way that you don't get skewed results but also makes it tricky for kids with lower literacy levels to understand. The responses range from strongly agree to strongly disagree from left to right - then one question may be I feel safe at school and the next something like There are times I have not felt safe at school - make it tricky to go from agree to the first statement and understanding you disagree with the next ITMS??

I have been to schools where kids have responded highly to feeling unsafe at school, all because of one student, who admittedly was a behavioural nightmare, but he was a threat to himself not other kids yet they all responded in a negative way on the survey to school safety.

I don't really think that the survey conveys a huge amount about how good the kids feel about school - I think you will get that from a tour and walking around the school during class times, preferably not in a big group tour. If you rock up for a tour and the Principal says come back another time, I would be questioning it!

Anyhooo after all that, use it like you would anything else to make your decision but not based on the survey solely or out of place with tours, results, programs, and gut feelings. xx