Best questions for teacher survey about school leadership

Here are some of the best questions for a teacher survey about school leadership—plus tips to help you generate them and get more insightful feedback. With Specific, you can easily build a conversational survey in seconds that feels natural for teachers to complete.

Best open-ended questions for teacher surveys about school leadership

Open-ended questions are powerful. They let teachers share their true thoughts, give real examples, and mention concerns or praise you’d never think to ask about. In fact, a study found that 76% of respondents added comments to open-ended survey questions—showing how much people want to give detailed feedback when the space is offered. [1] But because these questions ask for more effort, it’s best to use them strategically, focusing on where you need rich, qualitative insights rather than basic numbers or ratings.

1. What aspects of our school leadership most positively impact your teaching experience?

2. Can you describe a time when school leadership supported you or your team especially well?

3. If you could change one thing about the current school leadership approach, what would it be and why?

4. How comfortable do you feel approaching school leaders with concerns or suggestions?

5. What could school leadership do to improve communication with teachers?

6. Describe how school leadership influences the school culture and atmosphere.

7. What challenges do you face that you feel leadership could help address more effectively?

8. In your view, what values should school leaders prioritize to create the best environment for teachers and students?

9. Can you share an example of how school leadership responded to a crisis or difficult situation?

10. Are there any areas where you feel your feedback hasn’t been heard or acted upon?

Open-ended responses often highlight issues overlooked in closed-ended surveys. In one study, 81% of respondents pointed out topics missed by standard rating grids, suggesting the true power of open-ended feedback—especially in schools, where leadership affects the experience in ways rigid forms can’t capture. [3]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for teacher surveys about school leadership

Single-select multiple-choice questions are useful when you need to measure, compare, or track trends. They’re also less intimidating—teachers can quickly choose their answer, and the structure can help jumpstart more in-depth discussion in follow-up questions.

Here are three useful examples:

Question: How would you rate the overall effectiveness of school leadership?

• Very effective

• Somewhat effective

• Neither effective nor ineffective

• Somewhat ineffective

• Very ineffective

Question: How often do you feel your input is considered in school decisions?

• Always

• Often

• Sometimes

• Rarely

• Never

Question: What is the preferred way for you to share feedback with school leadership?

• Anonymous survey

• In-person meeting

• Email

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" Often after a multiple-choice question, you want to understand the story behind the pick. For example, if a teacher selects “Somewhat ineffective” for leadership effectiveness, follow up with, “Why do you feel school leadership is somewhat ineffective for your needs?” This gets you past mere numbers and into actionable insights. Research shows that follow-up questions lead to longer and more detailed responses from participants. [4]

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Sometimes you can’t predict every response. Adding “Other” lets teachers point out unique preferences or concerns. A follow-up like, “Please elaborate on your preferred feedback method,” often uncovers new channels or solutions you hadn’t considered.

NPS question: gauging teacher sentiment on school leadership

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question works well not just for products, but also for gauging overall sentiment toward school leadership. NPS asks: “How likely are you to recommend our school leadership team to another teacher?” Teachers answer on a 0–10 scale, and you can compare your score to benchmarks or track change over time. This one metric gives you a snapshot of loyalty and advocacy. Plus, it’s easy to automate with AI by branching follow-up questions based on the score given. To instantly create your own NPS survey tailored for teachers and school leadership, check out this NPS-survey generator.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions turn surveys from checklists into conversations—exactly how Specific’s AI-powered surveys work. When teachers reply, the AI reads their answer and asks smart, context-based follow-ups, just like a skilled interviewer. This reduces ambiguity and uncovers much richer feedback, especially when exploring themes like school leadership. Automated follow-up saves you the back-and-forth emails you’d otherwise send to clarify or dig deeper, and helps teachers feel truly heard. Learn more about automated followup questions on our platform.

• Teacher: “Communication is sometimes unclear.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you give an example of when communication from school leadership was unclear or led to challenges?”

How many follow-ups to ask? In general, 2–3 followups are plenty for teacher surveys. Enable a setting to skip to the next question once you’ve collected what you need—Specific lets you fully customize this so it stays conversational, not overwhelming.

This makes it a conversational survey—teachers feel like they’re chatting, not filling in boxes, so their guard drops and honesty flows.

AI analysis, open-ended responses, unstructured feedback: Specific analyzes all responses with AI, so even super-long text answers or rambling stories get distilled into themes. Want to learn more? We made a quick guide on how to analyze open-ended survey responses with AI.

Try generating a survey and see how automatic follow-ups transform basic answers into insightful, actionable stories.

How to prompt ChatGPT (or GPT) for great teacher survey questions on school leadership

Don’t want to start from scratch? Use AI! You’ll get dramatically better results when you feed it more context. Here’s how to prompt:

Start simple—prompt ChatGPT:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for teacher survey about school leadership.

Now, add more context for better results. Example:

We’re designing a survey for experienced high-school teachers at an international school. The goal is to surface actionable feedback for our leadership team. Generate 10 open-ended questions that encourage detailed and honest answers—don’t ask about things we can measure easily elsewhere.

Once you have a big list, tidy things up:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Pick categories you want to explore in more depth, then prompt again:

Generate 10 questions for categories ‘communication’ and ‘vision and values’, relevant for teachers reflecting on school leadership.

(Pro tip: you can use Specific's AI survey generator for this process—no copy-paste needed.)

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey (like the kind you create with Specific) is an interactive, chat-style survey—every answer is met with natural, real-time follow-up questions from the AI, just like a human would ask. In contrast, manual or traditional surveys are rigid lists of questions—if you need clarification or want to dig deeper, you have to circle back later, which creates extra work and leads to lost context.

Why use AI for teacher surveys? Teacher feedback is nuanced. AI conversations ensure complex, context-dependent issues about school leadership aren’t missed. Plus, the best AI survey generators, like Specific, allow for instant editing, dynamic followups, and one-click analysis—eliminating the usual barriers to excellent teacher surveys. For more on designing and launching one, see our guide on how to create a teacher survey about school leadership.

Specific is built for the best-in-class conversational survey experience—making the feedback process smooth and engaging for teachers, while letting leadership teams focus on insights (not grunt work).

See this school leadership survey example now

Experience a smarter, faster way to engage teachers—see how AI-driven conversational surveys instantly capture honest, actionable insights and make analysis effortless.