Fewer than one in 20 parents used Ofsted’s system to give their views about their child’s school last year, according to new figures.

Ofsted today released statistics about Parent View for the academic year 2017-18.

The system allows parents to answer a series of questions about their school, on topics ranging from bullying and homework to teaching and leadership.

Last month, the Commons Public Accounts Committee called for the inspectorate to collect more and better evidence from parents.

An Ofsted spokesperson said: “Parents’ opinions about their child’s school are very important to us. We are working to improve the Parent View website, so that it is easier for parents to share their views at any time, not just during inspection.

"Our review will include extensive user research into what parents want to share and know, and how schools and inspectors want to use that information."

She added that Ofsted also has a virtual ‘parents’ panel’ with over 1,000 members, and that it runs an annual parents’ attitude survey, using the findings to inform its thinking and policy development.

Here are five key points from today's figures, although Ofsted itself warns that “response rates are low so any conclusions should be made with caution”:

1. Not many parents use Parent View: The response rate for parents with children at state-funded schools was 4.7 per cent last year. This represents 387,000 parents using the system in 2017-18. However, this proportion is higher for independent schools, at 10.9 per cent.
2. London has the worst response rate: There are big regional differences in the response rate. A total of 3.7 per cent of parents in London used Parent View last year, compared with 6.6 per cent in the East of England, which had the highest response.
3. Parents at independent schools are more positive than those at state-funded schools: In all 12 questions that Parent View asks, the responses from parents from private schools were more positive than those in the state sector. The disparity was biggest when it came to bullying, where there was a 15-percentage-point difference between those who were positive about how the school deals with the problem.
4. Bullying is a big concern for state school parents: More than a third of parents with children in the state sector did not agree that their school “deals effectively with bullying”. This represented the most negative response out of all 12 questions. In total, 37 per cent strongly agreed with the statement, and 29 per cent agreed, while 7 per cent disagreed and 6 per cent strongly disagreed. Some 22 per cent said they did not know. No other question resulted in more than 5 per cent answering “don’t know”.
5. Parents say their children are happy at school: When asked whether their child is happy at their school, 92 per cent of parents in the state sector answered positively. Some 93 per cent said their child felt safe, 88 per cent said their child makes good progress and 88 per cent said their child is taught well.