Department for Education’s Omnibus Surveys – quick, high-quality insights from parents, pupils, teachers and school leaders

The education sector has needed to respond quickly to numerous challenges in recent years. Education recovery following the pandemic continues to be a priority for schools and colleges. Challenges relating to school and college budgets, and recruitment and retention of teachers are also well-documented. In this context, the Department for Education (DfE) needs rapid insights from teachers, education leaders and families to help guide policy in a wide range of areas. Given the fast-pace of societal and policy changes, the DfE needed a flexible research offer delivering quick turnaround findings on the experiences and perceptions of teachers, education leaders, parents and pupils.

Approach

Since 2023, Verian has designed and delivered DfE’s Omnibus Surveys. The surveys demonstrate our expertise recruiting large random panels of teachers, education leaders, parents and pupils in schools and colleges across the whole of England. Verian delivers regular survey waves across each of these audiences, offering high-quality findings to DfE within 1-2 weeks of the start of each fieldwork period. The findings help to guide policy in a wide range of areas from pupil attendance and behaviour, extracurricular activities, school infrastructure and the use of AI in education. Verian has also delivered spin-off qualitative projects in a wide range of areas. These include how schools are managing the challenges of falling pupil numbers and strategies in relation to serious violence in schools and colleges.

Outcome

The surveys deliver insights in a wide range of areas but some of the most interesting recent findings relate to the use of AI in education. As with society more broadly, the rise of AI presents both opportunities and challenges in the education sector. Our work highlights considerable growth in the use of AI in education. The use of Generative AI by school and college leaders doubled between April 2023 and February 2024 (from 12% to 23%) and nearly trebled over the same period among teachers (from 11% to 35%). The most common use of AI being to help create lesson and curriculum resources. The use of Generative AI among secondary pupils and learners for lessons or homework similarly doubled between April 2023 and February 2024 (from 14% to 28%). This is despite only 5% of teachers saying they allowed pupils to use Generative AI for the work they set.