Perceptions
A powerful survey tool for all ages that helps schools gather, understand, and act on feedback from students, staff, and families. With customisable surveys and in-depth reporting, Perceptions turns voices into insight.
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What we actually measure
Six topics pupils evaluate, as standardised questions
A student belongs when they feel safe, accepted, respected, understood and able to engage to succeed. A Trust dashboard cannot answer the questions below, and neither can attendance data.
Do adults here know and care about me?
Am I safe here?
Am I treated fairly?
Can I be myself here?
Will someone notice if I struggle?
Can I participate and succeed?
How it reaches you
From multiple schools to a single view
Nothing to chase and nothing to merge. The same process runs in every academy, and the Trust view assembles itself as responses come in.
Ask everyone the same questions
Pupils, staff and families answer the same questions, at every school and academy, on the same cycle. No school runs its own version.
Data is rolled up automatically
No headteacher summaries to chase, no spreadsheets to merge. One live view across the whole Trust, updated as schools respond.
See what needs attention first
Dips in belonging, risk signals and outliers surface on their own, school by school and cohort by cohort, so you know where to look before your board does.
Direct support and show your work
Intervene with the schools that need it, target resources where they change something, and pull the evidence straight into your next board report.
What you get out of it
Approach your board meetings with confidence
Can you answer these trustee questions without assumptions or anecdotes?
- Which cohorts of pupils feel safe and valued? Which do not?
- What does your belonging data say is happening at each school right now?
- Where is risk developing, before it shows up in your attendance, retention or safeguarding figures?
- How will you use your belonging data to assure the board that you are moving in the right direction?
Dr Kyri Chrysostomou
Senior Trust Education DirectorSouth Lincolnshire Academies Trust
Satchel Pulse will help provide the tools to gather meaningful insights into student wellbeing, engagement, and sense of belonging. By investing time and effort into this platform, we can proactively identify areas for improvement, track progress, and implement strategies that align with our Trust priorities. This approach not only strengthens our compliance with national standards but also reflects our commitment to creating an inclusive environment where every student can succeed.
David Smith
PrincipalBlue Coat Church of England Academy
The surveys helped us gain unique insight into how effective our drive to promote a sense of belonging has been with specific cohorts and groups within cohorts. The precision in the analysis has allowed us to effectively plan our response, based on clear evidence and supported by a wealth of ready to use resources within the Satchel Pulse platform. At a time when developing a sense of belonging is crucial within our schools and where inclusion is a system-wide priority, Satchel Pulse has provided us with a valuable tool which ensures that support and intervention is evidence-led and our response is shaped by tried and tested resources.
Rachel Usher
HeadteacherLedbury Primary school
We have been thoroughly impressed by the quality of the platform and the accompanying resources. The insight it provides has the potential to support us in developing a deeper understanding of pupil and staff mental health and wellbeing. We feel confident that Satchel Pulse will offer useful and meaningful data to inform our ongoing work in this important area.
How it works
The early warning improvement cycle
Five disciplines, repeated every term. Together they transform belonging from a number somebody reports into work somebody owns.
Measure
TermlyOne validated question set, 5 to 10 minutes, 70+ languages with audio read-aloud. Run across every academy in the same window so results are genuinely comparable.
Segment
AutomaticCohorts generated from your MIS via Wonde. Year group, SEND, disadvantaged, EAL, children with a social worker, and the intersections between them.
Connect
MIS dataBelonging scores read alongside the attendance and behaviour data you already hold, so a low score is a leading indicator, not a standalone number.
Respond
OwnedLow-scoring cohorts become intervention groups inside the platform. Priority, named owner, action, review date. Two or three per academy per term, not twelve.
Assure
Exception-ledA termly board view for trustees: trend, gap, action, impact. Evidence of improvement, not pages of survey output.
Run once, this is a survey. Run every term, it becomes an improvement cycle.
Belonging CPD
Measuring belonging is half the job
Belonging CPD is whole-staff professional learning from Satchel Pulse, matched to where each academy is now and delivered in person or online.
Most Trusts already have good belonging practice. It just isn’t happening in every academy, every classroom or every corridor. One student is greeted by name; another goes all day without a word from an adult. The difference is rarely care. It’s consistency.
One message across the Trust
Every adult, from teachers to support, office and site staff, gets the same language, strategies and expectations, delivered the same way in every academy.
Each academy starts where it is
Four stages, from Exploring to Sustaining. Each academy gets the sessions that match its stage, so nobody repeats what they already do well.
Evidence that it’s working
Perceptions shows where belonging is breaking before the training, and for whom it has improved after. Already using another survey? We work with that too.
