The CHEQ is administered at the start of the school year, during September and October. Over this time, schools will invite parents and caregivers to complete the CHEQ at school or home.

On average, the CHEQ takes about 15 minutes to complete.

Parents/caregivers can complete the CHEQ anytime up until October 31st. After this time, the system will be closed.

You can check out the entire questionnaire in PDF format by clicking here.

The CHEQ can be completed online at home. Parents or caregivers will receive a paper login sheet or email from their child’s school both containing their login credentials.

Parents/caregivers can complete the questionnaire later. When they log back into the system using the same login information, any responses they provided previously will be stored.

Please contact the CHEQ team at the Human Early Learning Partnership cheq@help.ubc.ca to be sent your login information.

All questions are optional. For many questions, there are also “Prefer not to answer” and “Don’t know” response options. When a parent/caregiver chooses ‘prefer not to answer’ this does not get reported back to the school in any way.

There is a read-aloud audio button beside each question to hear the question read out loud.

At this time, the CHEQ is available in English, Simplified Chinese and Punjabi. Parents/caregivers are notified of this in the CHEQ Parent/Caregiver Consent Letter. In addition to English, the Parent/Caregiver Consent Letter is available in Simplified Chinese, Punjabi, Korean, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Farsi. English language learners who think they may have difficulty understanding the questionnaire are encouraged to bring along a relative or friend who can support them. A trained CHEQ Leader is also present during the CHEQ Parent and Caregiver Meeting to assist parents/caregivers as needed. Finally, there is a read-aloud function for each question that parents and caregivers may opt to use if they prefer to listen to, rather than read, the questions. Our ultimate goal is to make the CHEQ easily accessible to all and we are working towards making the CHEQ available online in additional languages.

No, parents/caregivers are not able to complete a paper copy of the CHEQ for many reasons. First, it is more secure to have all of the reports online within HELP’s systems, which meet or exceed the requirements of provincial and federal privacy legislation. Also, transitioning to the online survey allows HELP to reduce paper waste. Finally, the online system improves the efficiency of data collection and analysis.

Names are attached to individual and classroom snapshot reports; however, these reports are not public and are for internal uses only. No names are attached to school reports.

Reports (including individual reports) are for internal use only and are not available to parents/caregivers.

We are currently in the development stage of the CHEQ Community Reports. We are working with participating school districts and communities to identify a report format and connect that will be most useful for stakeholders.

You are welcome to involve Early Years Partners at the CHEQ Parent and Caregivers Meeting to assist parents/caregivers to log in and complete the questionnaire. Any non-school personnel who provide support at the CHEQ Parent and Caregiver Meeting must sign a HELP Confidentiality Agreement. Please note that a trained member of school personnel must also be present during the CHEQ Parent and Caregiver Meeting while parents/caregivers complete the questionnaire.

There are two main reasons why the CHEQ is administered in September, and not in the Spring. First, administering the CHEQ in September maximizes participation. Not all students entering Kindergarten in September have been enrolled by the Spring, thus a Spring administration would not be able to capture the entire incoming student population. Second, given the rapidity of brain and biological development in the early years, children undergo significant developmental change with each passing month. Due to this, we wait until September to administer the CHEQ to capture the many influential opportunities and experiences children will encounter over the summer. In this way, we can provide schools and communities with up-to-date information that can best help them to plan for and support their incoming students.

The data from the CHEQ may be linked at the individual level with other data to learn about the factors that influence children’s well-being, health, and school success. Other data may include education and health information such as the Early Development Instrument (EDI) and the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI). The data that are linked can only be used for research or statistical purposes by HELP approved researchers, under an approved Research Agreement.