As part of our evidence base for inspection, we ask learners and parents and carers to complete a questionnaire prior to a core inspection. This covers simple questions with fixed answers as well as those that allow fuller response. We ask providers to encourage all learners from year 3 upwards to complete the questionnaire.

We ask learners questions on two main themes: well-being and learning experiences. We ask parents and carers questions about their child’s well-being, learning, and their voice within the provider.

We present the responses to the closed questions on our website at a national level by sector. Some sectors are smaller than others, and so have fewer providers inspected across the academic year. To avoid identification of providers, we only present data from sectors where we undertook two or more inspections.

We do not publish responses to open questions.

We also have pre-inspection questionnaires for staff and governors but we have prioritised presenting learners’ and parents’ views in the first instance as this is also of wider general interest for our annual report. We will consider publishing the national results from our staff questionnaires in future years.

Please see our website for copies of the questions used in our pre-inspection questionnaires.

Note on limitations

Due to the following limitations, this national summary should not be interpreted as a nationally representative sample of pupils and parents/carers in Wales. Instead, it provides an aggregated picture of the views of those who chose to take part.

• Not everyone completes the questionnaires, so the responses may not reflect the views of all pupils or parents/carers.
• Schools and other providers share and encourage the questionnaires in different ways. This means some providers may have higher or lower response rates than others.
• Not all pupils or parents/carers have the same level of access to digital services or the internet. This can affect who is able to complete an online questionnaire and may lead to some groups being under-represented.
• To keep responses anonymous, we do not ask for names or other identifying information. Unfortunately, this does allow a person to submit more than one response.
• As we do not collect information such as age, gender, or ethnicity, we cannot explore how views might differ between groups of learners or parents/carers.
• The survey links can be used multiple times, e.g., to allow for families with more than one child to respond.  This also means we cannot completely rule out the possibility that someone outside the intended group may complete the questionnaire.
• Although we design the questions to be as clear as possible, individuals may understand them in different ways. Younger pupils, for example, may be influenced by the help or explanations they are given.
• Each sector receives its own questionnaire, so some questions do not apply to each sector. This also means responses cannot always be directly compared across different sectors.