Research and analysis

Parent, pupil and learner voice: December 2023

Updated 17 December 2024

Applies to England

Introduction

The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned Verian (formerly known as Kantar Public) to recruit and maintain a panel of parents, pupils and learners in England, known as the parent, pupil and learner voice (PPLV). The PPLV is designed to collect robust evidence to help DfE understand the perspectives of parents, carers, pupils and learners. This allows us to make more effective policy.

The PPLV works as a series of short surveys across the academic year, covering a range of new and longstanding policy issues. This report is about the findings from the December 2023 survey wave of the PPLV.

Methodology

The PPLV survey is answered by secondary school pupils (years 7 to 11) and parents of primary, secondary and special school pupils (years 1 to 11) who have agreed to participate in short, regular research surveys on topical education issues.

We select parents and pupils randomly using records from the National Pupil Database (NPD) and invite them to take part in an online survey. For the first survey of the academic year we send invitation letters to households. For other surveys in that same academic year, the invitation is sent by email and text message to the parents, pupils and learners who agreed to join the panel in the first survey.

We conducted the survey between 1 December 2023 and 22 January 2024. The respondents were:

• 1828 primary school parents
• 1870 secondary school parents
• 1104 special school parents
• 3976 secondary school pupils

The topics included in the survey are related to a variety of policy areas that teams in DfE are working on. Policy teams submit questions for inclusion in the survey, and use the results to help inform policy development in the areas they work on. This report summarises findings for each topic covered.

Unless otherwise stated, when we refer to the ‘average’, we are reporting the arithmetic mean. Complete findings can be found in the published data tables, which include more detail on how different groups answered each question.

The report makes some comparisons to previous surveys conducted in previous academic years, for example the parent, pupil and learner panel omnibus surveys for 2022 to 2023. These comparisons are helpful to understand how trends may be changing. However, the survey methodology changes over time and so comparisons to previous years are not as reliable as survey findings within each academic year.

Further information on the survey methodology is available in the parent, pupil and learner voice technical report: 2023 to 2024 academic year.

Banding for percentages

We use a consistent banding system for describing percentages, as follows:

• Very few - 0% to 10%
• A small minority - 11% to 32%
• A minority - 33% to 47%
• About half - 48% to 52%
• A majority - 53% to 66%
• A large majority - 67% to 89%
• Almost all - 90% to 100%

We do not describe 0% and 100% as ‘none’ and ‘all’ because figure rounding may mean this is not accurate. For instance, 100% may be 99.6% of respondents, rounded to the nearest whole number.

Topics covered in this survey

The survey included questions about:

• mobile phones in schools
• additional tutoring through or outside school
• awareness and use of family hubs
• views on local services for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and access to SEND support services
• confidence in school support for SEND pupils
• behaviour in school
• school attendance
• pupil wellbeing and sense of belonging at school

Mobile phones in schools

We asked secondary school pupils about their school’s policy on the use of mobile phones (Figure 1).

The majority of pupils (62%) said that they can bring their phone to school, but cannot use it. A small minority (16%) said they can use it in lessons with permission, and very few (9%) said that they can use it at break and lunch.

A minority of pupils (42%) said that pupils at their school follow the rules on mobile phones use all of the time or most of the time, while 33% said pupils follow the rules home of the time. A small minority (23%) said that pupils follow the rules rarely or never.

Tutoring

A small minority (24%) of secondary school pupils said they had received additional tutoring through their school in the last academic year (between September 2022 and July 2023), while the majority (66%) had not. A small minority of pupils (13%) also said they had received private academic tutoring in the last school year.

Among the pupils who had received additional tutoring through their school, a large majority (86%) received that tutoring in person, while very few had received tutoring online (7%) or both online and in person (5%).

A large majority of pupils (70%) received tutoring in a small group, while a minority (23%) had received tutoring one-to-one.

We asked pupils who had received additional tutoring through their school what benefits they had experienced as a result of their tutoring (Figure 2).

About half (48%) said that tutoring helped them do better in the subject they received tutoring in. A minority (35%) said they felt more confident in the subject they received tutoring in and a small minority (24%) said that they felt more confident at school in general. Very few (9%) said they had experienced no benefits.

Family hubs

About half of parents (47%) had heard of family hubs. They had most commonly found out about them through communications from a nursery, school, or college (28%), online (25%), and through a health service (22%).

We asked parents who were aware of family hubs which services, if any, they had accessed through a family hub in the last 12 months. Parents most commonly selected the following services:

• early years education and health services (10%)
• SEND support (8%)
• healthcare services, including mental health and wellbeing support (6%)

We asked parents who had heard of family hubs, but had never used a family hub service, why they had not done so. A large majority (71%) said this was because they or their family do not need to access the services.

Parent views on local SEND services

We asked parents of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) if they were aware of their local special educational needs and disabilities information, advice and support service (SENDIASS) (Figure 3).

The majority (58%) had not heard of their local SENDIASS, while a minority (39%) were aware of their local SENDIASS.

Among parents who knew a little or a lot about their local SENDIASS, around half (50%) had used it, though very few (12%) had used it more than twice. Around half (47%) had not used it.

We also asked parents of pupils with SEND whether their local council had told them enough about the SEND services available in the local area, and whether there is enough SEND support available locally for their child (Figure 4).

A small minority (11%) agreed or strongly agreed that the local council has told them enough about the SEND services available in their area, while the majority (59%) disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Similarly, a small minority (14%) agreed or strongly agreed that there is enough local SEND support available, while about half (48%) disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Confidence in school SEND support

We asked parents of pupils with SEND how confident they feel that their child’s school is able to support their child’s special educational needs or disability (Figure 5).

The majority (64%) were very or fairly confident that their child’s school is able to support their child’s special educational needs or disability. A small minority (29%) said they were not very confident or not at all confident.

Similarly, the majority of parents of pupils with SEND (63%) said the support their child receives has been very useful or fairly useful in supporting their special educational need or disability, while a small minority (24%) said the support was either not very useful or not useful at all.

Access to SEND support

We asked parents of pupils with SEND whether their child requires specialist support (Figure 6).

The most commonly required support types were mental health support (22%), speech and language therapy (20%) and medical support (19%).

For those whose child required specialist support, we asked whether their child had received this support since the start of the school year (Figure 7).

Across all support types, the majority of parents reported that their child received the support they required.

The support types with the largest majority receiving them were medical support (86%) and physiotherapy (85%). The support types with the smallest majority receiving them were occupational therapy (63%) and support from an educational psychologist (54%).

We asked parents who said their child required a type of specialist SEND support, but were not currently receiving it, why their child was unable to access it (Figure 8).

The most common reason was that their child is currently on the waiting list (43%). A small minority (26%) said that there are no support staff (such as therapists) available at their child’s school or that their child doesn’t meet the criteria (12%).

Behaviour in school

A minority of pupils (43%) said behaviour at their school over the past week was either good or very good, while a small minority (15%) said it was poor or very poor. A minority (38%) said it was neither good nor poor.

We asked pupils about how often certain positive behaviours occurred in their school over the past week of term (Figure 9).

Almost all pupils (90%) said that staff had been respectful to one another every or most days during the last week of term.

The majority (54%) also said that pupils had been respectful to each other every or most days, a minority (40%) said this happened some days, and very few (4%) said this never happened.

Similarly, the majority (57%) of pupils said their school had been calm and orderly every or most days, a minority (32%) said this happened some days, and very few (8%) said this never happened.

We asked pupils how frequently the misbehaviour of other pupils had interrupted their work or the lessons in the past week (Figure 10).

The majority of pupils (59%) said that the misbehaviour of other pupils had interrupted the lesson or their work in most lessons or some lessons in the past week. A minority (34%) said this happened rarely or never, while very few (6%) said this happened in all lessons.

A large majority (70%) said that teachers dealt with these interruptions very or fairly quickly.

School belonging

We asked parents and pupils a series of questions about how they or their child felt about school over the past week. Firstly, we asked how often they or their child felt safe at school (Figure 11).

Almost all primary school parents (93%) said their child felt safe at school every day or most days over the past week, while a large majority of secondary school parents (86%) and special school parents (84%) said the same.

A large majority of pupils (81%) also said they felt safe at school every day or most days.

We also asked parents and pupils how often they or their child enjoyed going to school over the past week (Figure 12).

A large majority of primary school parents (87%), secondary school parents (70%), and special school parents (78%) said their child had enjoyed going to school every day or most days over the past week.

A minority of pupils (45%) said that they had enjoyed coming to school every day or most days over the past week, with 36% saying they enjoyed going to school some days, and 17% saying they never enjoyed going to school.

Finally, we asked pupils how often they felt like they belonged at school over the past week (Figure 13).

The majority of pupils (65%) said they felt they had belonged at school every day or most days over the past week, while very few (10%) said they felt they had never belonged at school over the past week.

We asked pupils to respond to a series of statements about adults at their school, on a scale of 1 (Never) to 5 (Always).

The average scores across the statements were:

• 3.6 for “there is an adult who really cares about me”
• 3.6 for “there is an adult who tells me when I do a good job”
• 3.8 for “there is an adult who listens to me when I have something to say”
• 3.7 for “there is an adult who believes I will be a success”

We combined these averages to produce an overall ‘school connectedness’ score, between 4 and 20 (Figure 14).

The average school connectedness score was 14.8. This was higher than when we last asked these questions (13.9 in May 2023), and than when we asked these questions at a similar time of year (14.2 in November 2022).

School attendance

We asked pupils and parents how often they or their child had physically attended school over the previous two weeks of term at the point they completed the survey (with surveys conducted from 1 December 2023 to 22 January 2024) (Figure 15).

Almost all parents (97%) and pupils (95%) said that they or their child attended school every day or most days in the previous week. Compared to November 2022, reported attendance was very similar for pupils and for parents of primary and secondary pupils. We did not survey parents of special school pupils prior to the 2023/24 academic year.

Among parents and pupils who said they or their child had not attended school every day over the past two weeks, A large majority of parents (73%) and pupils (67%) said this was due to illness. The second most common reason for absence was anxiety or mental health problems, with 21% of parents and 24% of secondary pupils saying this.

We asked respondents who said that they or their child had not attended due to anxiety or mental health problems what factors contributed to this.

The most common factors selected by parents were worries about lessons and learning (57%), worries about other pupils’ behaviour (48%), and worries about getting on with teachers (42%). The most common factors selected by pupils were general worries not about anything in particular (57%), worries about lessons and learning (53%), and worries about other pupils’ behaviour (38%).

Pupil wellbeing

We asked parents and pupils a series of ONS-validated questions about personal wellbeing (Figures 16 and 17). These questions are known as the ‘ONS-4’ measures and are answered using a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest (most happy) and 0 being the lowest (least happy).

We asked pupils how happy they were yesterday. The average happiness score was 7.0. Pupil reported happiness was higher than the last time we asked this question (6.3 in May 2023), and than when we last asked this question at a similar time of year (6.6 in November 2022).

We also asked parents how happy their child appeared yesterday. The average happiness score was:

• 8.6 for primary parents
• 7.7 for secondary parents
• 7.1 for special school parents

These results were similar to when we last asked this question, when the average score for primary parents was 8.6 (September 2022) and the average score for secondary parents was 7.5 (June 2022).

We asked pupils to what extent they are satisfied with their life. The average satisfaction score was 7.1. Pupil reported satisfaction was higher than the last time we asked this question (6.8 in May 2023), and than when we last asked this question at a similar time of year (6.8 in November 2022).

We asked pupils to what extent they feel that the things they do in their life are worthwhile. The average score for feeling that their life is worthwhile was 7.2. This was slightly higher than (6.7 in May 2023), and than when we last asked this question at a similar time of year (6.9 in November 2022).

The average anxiousness score (with 10 being most anxious) was 3.3. Pupil reported anxiousness was lower than the last time we asked this question (4.6 in May 2023) and than when we last asked this question at a similar time of year (4.0 in November 2022).

We also asked parents how anxious their child appeared yesterday. The average anxiousness score was:

• 2.1 for primary parents
• 2.7 for secondary parents
• 4.2 for special school parents

These results were similar to when we last asked this question, when the average score for primary parents was 2.2 (September 2022) and the average score for secondary parents was 2.9 (June 2022).

We asked pupils how often they felt lonely (Figure 18).

A small minority of pupils (13%) said they often feel lonely, 46% said they hardly ever or never feel lonely and 38% said they feel lonely some of the time.

The percentage of pupils who said they often felt lonely was lower than in March 2023 (16%), when we last asked this question.

Glossary

Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND): a child or young person has SEND if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for them. A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if they:

• have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age
• have a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions

Many children and young people who have SEND may also have a disability under the Equality Act 2010 – that is ‘a physical or mental impairment which has a long-term and substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities’. Where a disabled child or young person requires special educational provision, they will also be covered by the SEND definition.

Special educational needs and disabilities information, advice and support service (SENDIASS): a local authority service which offers free, impartial, and confidential advice and information to young people with SEND, their parents and carers and professionals who support young people with SEND. Each local authority has a SENDIASS.

Special schools: schools which provide an education for children with SEND. Almost all pupils in special schools have an education, health and care plan (EHCP).