Parent survey questions: 60 for teachers, schools, camps and daycares

You want to know how families feel about your class, your school or your camp. So you send a form home, and it asks 30 questions in teacher language. A handful of parents answer, mostly the ones who already talk to you every day. The families you most need to hear from never open it.

Good parent survey questions fix that. They're short, they ask about one thing at a time, and every answer points to something you could change. This guide gives you 60 parent survey questions, grouped by what you want to learn: communication, learning, school climate and safety, family engagement, teachers and programs. Then come short sets for summer camps, after-school programs, daycares and preschools. It ends with a free question bank and a file you can import to build the form in a few minutes.

When to survey parents#

Pick the moment by the decision you need to make. A survey with no decision behind it is just a pile of opinions.

• Start of the year. Ask how families want to hear from you and what times suit them for events. You can still act on the answers this term.
• Middle of the year. Ask about communication, homework and how welcome families feel. There's time to fix things before the spring.
• End of the year or end of a session. Ask the big questions: overall satisfaction, teachers, programs. For camps and after-school programs, this is the one that shapes next year's sign-ups.
• After a change. A new pickup plan, a new app or a new homework policy deserves three or four questions, a few weeks in.

Once or twice a year is plenty for a whole school. A teacher can run a short class survey each term without wearing families out, as long as each one stays under 10 questions.

Keep it short and offer languages#

Parents answer surveys in the car line, on the bus or at 10 p.m. after the dishes. That means a phone screen and a few spare minutes. Aim for 10 to 15 parent survey questions on a school survey, and five to eight for a camp or daycare.

To keep it short:

• Put the most important questions first. If someone stops halfway, you still get the answers that matter.
• Use one overall question. "Overall, how satisfied are you with your child's school this year?" carries a lot. You don't need three versions of it.
• Make the open questions optional. One or two "What should we change?" boxes give you the detail. More than that, and people quit.
• Tell parents who will read their answers and what you'll do with them, in one line at the top of the form.

Language matters just as much. If families read Spanish, Arabic or Vietnamese best, an English-only survey quietly drops them. Two of the federal questions below ask whether a school has interpreters and translated notices for a reason.

HornetForms helps here in two ways. On every plan, the buttons and messages respondents see come in 12 languages, and right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew get a right-to-left layout. On Pro and Business, you can translate the whole form into up to 10 languages, with AI or with a CSV file you hand to a translator. Our guide to multilingual and right-to-left forms shows how translations work.

Where some of these questions come from#

Fifteen of the 60 parent survey questions below are adapted from a real national survey: the Parent and Family Involvement in Education questionnaire. It's part of the National Household Education Surveys Program, a US federal survey. The questionnaire's cover page says: "The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the U.S. Department of Education, is authorized to conduct the National Household Education Survey (NHES)." It adds: "The U.S. Census Bureau is administering this voluntary survey on behalf of NCES." (NCES, NHES 2023 Parent and Family Involvement questionnaire, read on 28 October 2026)

We borrowed from it because its questions have been asked of parents across the country, in plain words. For example, it asks parents how satisfied they are with "The way that school staff interacts with parents?", and how well the school is "Letting you know how this child is doing in school between report cards?" We changed "this child" to "your child", simplified some wording and answer options, and turned a few grids into single questions. The tables below mark these as NCES, with the question number from the 2023 form. The rest are ours.

Parent survey questions for schools and teachers#

These 36 questions work for a whole school, a grade team or a single class. Pick the goal that matters most this time, take most of your questions from it, and add the overall satisfaction question.

Communication#

The last one is underrated. Some schools send too much, through too many channels. If most parents say "Too many", cut before you add anything new.

Learning#

School climate and safety#

"Not sure" earns its place on the bullying question. A parent who has never needed the school's help with bullying can't judge it, and forcing a guess muddies your results.

Good to know: a safety question can turn up a real concern about one child. Before you send the survey, decide who reads the open answers and how fast, and put a line at the top that tells parents to contact the school directly about anything urgent.

Family engagement#

Read the first and the fifth together. If few families come to events and most say "Work hours", the fix is the schedule, not another flyer.

Teachers#

These are the parent survey questions for teachers to run in their own class. They're also the most sensitive for a whole-school survey, so agree with staff in advance how the answers will be shared and used.

Programs#

Running a parent survey for school improvement? Take one or two questions from each goal above, plus the overall question. That gives you a fair picture across the whole school in about 12 questions. Your improvement plan then starts from the lowest scores, not from the loudest emails.

Parent survey questions for summer camp, after school, daycare and preschool#

Programs outside the school day need fewer questions, and different ones. Parents care about the experience, the handover at drop-off and pick-up, and whether staff keep them in the loop. Six questions each, ready to copy.

Summer camp#

• How would you rate your child's camp experience overall? (Rating, 1 to 5 stars)
• How happy was your child to go to camp each day? (Linear scale, 1 to 5: Not happy to Very happy)
• How well did camp staff keep you informed during the session? (Very well, Just okay, Not very well, Not at all)
• How smooth were drop-off and pick-up? (Linear scale, 1 to 5: Very hard to Very smooth)
• Which activities did your child enjoy most? (Checkboxes with your own activities)
• Will you sign your child up again next summer? (Yes, Maybe, No)

Send these parent survey questions for summer camp on the last day or the day after. A week later, summer has moved on. "Will you sign up again?" is your early warning: follow up with the "Maybe" families while you still have places to fill. When sign-ups open again, our summer camp registration form guide covers sessions, fees and health forms.

After-school programs#

Parent survey questions for an after school program should check the fit with work hours first. That's often why families chose you.

• How well do the program's hours fit your work schedule? (Linear scale, 1 to 5: Not at all to Very well)
• Does your child get homework done during the program? (Most days, Some days, Rarely, My child has no homework)
• My child feels safe at the program. (Strongly agree to Strongly disagree)
• How satisfied are you with the activities on offer? (Very satisfied to Very dissatisfied)
• How well do staff tell you about your child's afternoon? (Very well, Just okay, Not very well, Does not do it at all)
• What would make the program better for your family? (Long answer, optional)

Daycare#

These parent survey questions for daycare work for baby rooms and older groups alike. Swap "our care" for your center's name if you prefer.

• How comfortable do you feel leaving your child in our care? (Linear scale, 1 to 5: Not comfortable to Very comfortable)
• How well do staff tell you about your child's day (meals, naps and activities)? (Very well, Just okay, Not very well, Does not do it at all)
• How satisfied are you with how clean the rooms and toys are? (Very satisfied to Very dissatisfied)
• How satisfied are you with the meals and snacks? (Very satisfied to Very dissatisfied, plus We bring our own)
• How easy are drop-off and pick-up? (Linear scale, 1 to 5: Very hard to Very easy)
• Is there anything about your child's care you would like us to change? (Long answer, optional)

Preschool#

• How ready do you feel your child is for kindergarten? (Linear scale, 1 to 5: Not ready to Very ready)
• How well does the preschool tell you what your child is learning? (Very well, Just okay, Not very well, Does not do it at all)
• Which skills would you like us to spend more time on? (Checkboxes: Letters and sounds, Numbers, Making friends, Following routines, Drawing and cutting, Speaking and listening)
• My child is happy to go to preschool. (Strongly agree to Strongly disagree)
• How useful were your meetings with your child's teacher this year? (Linear scale, 1 to 5: Not useful to Very useful)
• What should we know about your child that would help us teach them? (Long answer, optional)

That last preschool question doubles as a get-to-know-you question at the start of the year. For the contact details, allergies and pickup list, use a proper student information sheet instead. A survey is the wrong place for that.

Rating scales and open questions#

Most of the questions above end in a scale, and the scale shapes the answers. Three rules keep them honest:

• Label both ends. A bare 1 to 5 means different things to different parents. In HornetForms you can label the ends of a linear scale (up to 100 characters each), for example "Not at all" and "Very well".
• Keep one direction. If the good answer sits on the right on one question, keep it on the right everywhere.
• Use the same scale for questions you'll compare. The NCES satisfaction questions all use the same four points, so you can line them up side by side.

For agree and disagree statements, our Likert scale survey guide shows how to score them. For the wording itself, how to write survey questions covers leading questions and questions that ask two things at once, with before and after examples. And our guide to every question type explains when a matrix, a ranking or a checkbox list fits better.

Open questions need a light touch. Two is the sweet spot: one for what's working and one for what to change. Make both optional. A parent who writes three honest lines is worth more than ten who type "fine" to get past a required box.

Reach parents where they already are#

The best parent survey questions do nothing if nobody opens the form. Go to where parents already are:

• Print a QR code for pickup. The Share tab gives you a QR code as a PNG or SVG. Put it on a sign by the gate or on a note in the backpack.
• Put the link in the newsletter and in the class group chat, near the top, with one line on why you're asking.
• Use one link per class. Add a hidden field called class, then share a link like ?class=room-12 with each teacher. Every response carries the class, and it arrives as its own column in Google Sheets, so you can sort answers by room without asking parents another question.
• Set a close date. "Open until Friday" gets more answers than "whenever you have a moment".
• Send one reminder, two or three days before the close date.

For more on lifting the number of answers, see our guide to survey response rate. Families who signed a field trip permission slip online already know the drill: same phone, same kind of link.

Share results back#

Parents stop answering surveys when nothing seems to happen. Close the loop:

1. Read the low scores first. Filter for "Somewhat dissatisfied" and "Very dissatisfied", then read those families' open answers.
2. Sort the comments into three or four themes. Communication, pickup, homework and so on.
3. Pick one or two changes you'll actually make.
4. Tell families in the next newsletter: "You told us X. We're doing Y."

In HornetForms, the Summary tab sums up each question in one place, and the response filters narrow the table to the answers you pick, such as every "Very dissatisfied". You can send answers to Google Sheets as they arrive, and turn on an email to yourself for each new response if you like to read them as they come in. If colleagues share your workspace (roles are on Pro and Business), each of them can read every response in it, so tell parents in your intro line who will see the answers. Our guide on how to analyze survey data walks through counting, charting and reporting the results.

Free parent survey template: question bank and import file#

You get two free downloads:

• The parent survey question bank (Excel) holds all 60 questions, and it opens in Google Sheets too. Each row has the goal, the audience (school, camp, after school, daycare or preschool), the question type, the answer options or scale labels, and the source. Filter by audience, mark Yes in the Use it? column, and the summary counts your picks by audience and goal. It warns you when you pass 15. There's also a CSV copy with the same 60 rows.
• The parent survey import file (CSV) is a ready 16-question school survey you can turn into a form. It covers communication, learning, climate, engagement and teachers. The form doesn't ask for names or contact details.

To use the import file, open the Import a form screen in HornetForms and drop in the CSV. HornetForms reads it in your browser and uses the 12 example rows to guess each question's type. The example rows only guide the types: they never become responses. We ran the importer's own code on this file, and every column came out as planned:

• The grade and homework questions and the satisfaction, "how well" and agree or disagree questions become multiple choice, with the options in scale order.
• The "how would you like to hear from us", "which of these have you done" and "which times work best" questions become checkboxes.
• The overall rating becomes a 1 to 5 rating.
• The three open questions become long answers.

The import creates the questions. The rest you add in the editor in a few minutes: an intro line that says who reads the answers, a show rule if you want a follow-up for unhappy parents, and the form's language or translations. If the form is for students rather than parents, the course evaluation form template and our feedback form questions are a better start.

Build your parent survey#

Pick 10 to 15 parent survey questions from the bank, import the CSV or start blank, and print the QR code before Friday pickup. HornetForms takes unlimited responses within fair use on every plan, so a whole-school survey won't run into a response cap halfway through. Compare plans on the pricing page, then sign up for free and send your first parent survey this week.