Marking - or rather the lack of it

[lirael]

DS1 is coming to the end of Year 7. He's loved it, done really well and we've been very pleased with the school in general, apart from one area. During the course of the year he's had five long projects: two in History, one in Geog and two in Science. These projects have been bigged up in advance, kids have been given resources, support and told that they are vital for ongoing assessment. DS1 worked hard on all of them and was proud of the end results.

He's only had one (History) back. In the whole year! We asked about them at parents' evening in April and got a range of responses: 'the students wrote so much I'm still working through them'; ' I'm a Head of Year so I haven't had time'; 'I need to go through the projects with each individual student and I haven't had time yet'

Both DH and I are teachers - we know full well the horror of a full marking load and both of us have been guilty at times of putting marking off. But surely this is ridiculous?

[schooldidi]

I thought this might have been me you were talking about, thank God it's not!!! I've only missed marking a couple of classes books for the past couple of weeks because I've been marking exam papers (for internal exams) instead, 300 of them because I seem to teach a LOT of year 7 and 8.

That is ridiculous. I would be complaining. Pupils need to get regular feedback in order to know how to make progress. That's a fairly basic requirement of the job. If you don't have time to mark large projects then you shouldn't be setting large projects, smaller amounts more regularly are much easier to keep up with.

[lirael]

I suppose I am putting off complaining because I've been on the other side of the fence - and I'm also slightly worried that it will rebound on DS1.I used to hate complaining parents!

[Loshad]

Teacher here also, think this is totally unacceptable. Would be most worried about the effect on student motivation, and i would make a fuss if i was you.