NVPAC 2013 Parent Survey Results

In May 2013, the North Vancouver Parent Advisory Council (NVPAC) conducted a survey to help us represent the parent perspective at the School District level.
 

The survey asked 13 questions on the school environment, personalized learning, parent engagement, student engagement, student support, school communication and the overall education received. The survey was open to all parents of North Vancouver School District students with a total of 2301 responses received and 1001 written comments.

The survey was conducted by NVPAC with three primary purposes in mind to help NVPAC better represent parents across the district:

·         To identify areas of concern to parents in the North Vancouver School District that should be investigated further to understand the context of the concerns and opportunities for improvement

·         To establish baseline measures of satisfaction for the school district against which the impact of changes to the school system, such as the introduction of communication tools or new curriculum can be assessed

·         To capture parent suggestions, through open feedback of what works for their children, as input into potential ideas for wider adoption to improve the system.

Areas of investigation included:

·         School Physical and Social Environment

·         Educational Fit

·         Student Support

·         Parental Involvement

·         School and Teacher Communication

·         Responsiveness to Student/Parental Concerns

·         Student Engagement

·         Overall Quality of Schooling

 The results and discussion document presented below are the first of what is intended to be an annual survey of parent perspective. Without the context of other results with which to compare it is hard to assess how good these results are or are not. The 2014 Survey will be held at the end of May. By conducting the survey annually we hope to detect changes in perspective over time. 

NVPAC 2013 Survey Discussion and Conclusions
NVPAC 2013 Parent Survey Results
 

Overall Action Recommendations for NVPAC

From the survey we identified 3 areas warranting deeper inquiry and recommended several directions NVPAC should work on based on the feedback. From the results, we concluded that NVPAC should:  

•       Work with PACs, teachers and the School District to encourage teachers to improve communication with parents about school work, activities, homework and ongoing performance, potential through classroom blogs.

•       Work with the school district to clarify issue resolution practices and to provide better communication resources to PACs and parents to help parents understand how to address their specific concerns

•       Bring in speakers and work with the School District to enhance mechanisms to recognize and address bullying