Marking - lack of

They will find out, after exam season.

In our time no one cared about results. The results were our own and not the schools. Probably why our schools were often so dire! (comprehensive top set of 10 sets and I got 6 o levels).

Nowadays there is a lot more effort put into the exam season for year 10 (yes it starts that early) and 11. There is only 24 hours a day, so some things have to wait.

I also think it would be better to not set any but some school policies require it to be set. Parents also complain if homework isn't set! Teachers cannot win.

Im not a teacher but a parent governor and what I have learnt about teaching workloads since being elected three years ago has been a real eye opener.

If teachers arn't marking work how do they know children are doing it?

Sorry if it's a stupid question, but thinking back to when i was at school I wasn't a great student (I had other things going on, not because i was a 'bad kid') but if i had thought there was a chance my teacher wouldn't have marked my homework i simply wouldn't have done it.

I the OP's situation, when the teacher's for those lesson's finally did get around to marking my work they'd find 3 months worth of empty work books.. As it stood, my homework was marked weekly any set was usually handed in on the due day and pretty much always returned by the next lesson. Even then i probabally did only about 50% of the homework set the rest of the time i was happy to accept detention rather than do it.

What worry's me is that while i agree teaching standards have improved since i was at school, how do teachers know if a student is struggling if they don't mark thier work??

Year 5 being year 11!

I was at school in the 1970s and we had PSHCE - it was called Social Education. Some children also did General Studies.

My Maths teacher was the same one all five years - she was the best, you see - so took top set (the care for outcomes fell as your set got lower) and even though we were the golden kids, when she left to have a baby, we were given all of year 5 with a supply teacher who gave out past papers or exercises and, when we had finished, we marked them ourselves

Teaching is so much better nowadays and, while there are times when teachers appear to not be perfect, they quite likely are trying to be - just with a different year group.

Coursework has now been abolished in many subjects and should never have been 'continually amended' anyway.

I was at school in the 90s and most of my teachers did their marking in lessons while we worked in silence. Compared to that, yes, this is a better system.

I was at school in the later 70s and early 80s and my lessons consisted of read this page in a text book and answer this question. Little evidence of planning. I think that is the major difference.

I have never continually ammended courswork, students draft I give comments.They the complete it and hand it in.

Most of the time student hand in work and get it back next lesson, I would say that is true for most teachers.

Sad, but in my school I literally would not get to bed until 4am if I marked everyone's book every fortnight. Workload for more pressing things is too high to allow for it.

I've been teaching at my current school since Sept and departmental policy is that I am not ALLOWED to mark exercise books, only major assessments, one per topic, which are done on paper and kept in folders at school. Small homework tasks are supposed to be checked in class. Parents never get to see marked work and I rarely get to comment on my students' writing. It's utter, utter madness. Obviously less work for me in some ways but I haven't seen some students' writing for weeks.

It must be really frustrating as a parent not to see regular feedback on your child's work, let alone for the child.

Interesting.
Ds in yr 7 is waiting to get back an online English assessment which was completed in mid Feb-I asked at parents night in mid March what was happening, and she assured me he'd get it back by Easter.
I had forgotten all about it till reading this thread.
Must get ds to chase it up tomorrow

Onceamai - hmmm like you suggest I'd be more worried about whether misunderstandings are getting embedded than about actual lack of marking in itself- with that in mind, I know it's not the ideal solution but if I were you I'd just have a quick skim through myself and check there are no glaring recurring problems- if there are you can chat them through with DD yourself and at least that'd take the weight off your mind?

Blue - the English dept is presumably quite large....I was one of 3 RE teachers and we taught the whole school between us and KS5, and I also taught KS3 History and Geography.

That meant that for Year 8 once I had 5 year 8 classes (2 RE, 2 Geog and 1 History). That's 150 books give or take and reports just for Year 8. A English colleague expressed surprise I was struggling with the Year 8 reports as she only taught one set of Year 8 in common with the rest of her department.

If I were sill teaching now then half term would be spent marking exams for the exam board (which improves results at school) and catching up eith KS3 marking as my focus would have been on getting the Year 11 through the GCSE before half term (as both the papers for my board are sat before then).

If the books haven't been done since the beginning of March, they could have been done at Easter.

DS in year 9 is my third child and so I've got used to the ebb and flow of the school year by now. DD2 is about to take A2s and so her teachers are madly marking past papers, running extra revision classes and generally giving their all. In a couple of weeks she'll be on her own in the actual exams and the focus will return to the younger ones - noblegiraffe's suggestion to wait till after half term is a sensible one.

If I cannot mark a piece of homework within a fortnight I do not set it.

Marking seems to be randomly conducted for my DD as well (year 10). It is more promptly carried out when a parents' evening approaches.

If work isnt going to be marked then teachers should have the courage of their convictions and tell the students.

In order to get some semblance of a work/life balance, my Head of Dept actively tells us to ease up on marking in KS3 when there is a shed-load of marking to be done for exam classes.

So I'd still set homework, but it would be online computer marked homework, or I would get them to swap books and mark in class.

Schools were off for most of April too, so March isn't as bad as it sounds. If I were you I'd wait till after half term, once most of the exams are over and only kick off if things don't pick up.

I work in a mainstream secondary school as an SEN TA and two of my students are in Year 8 (the other is in year 10).

The Year 8 maths books haven't been marked by the teacher since Xmas. Same applies to Science. Many other subjects (including History, Geography, Spanish and Technology) haven't been marked since Feb half term. This includes all classwork and what little homework is set/done.

It's so frustrating because I have to hound/encourage/force my students to do their homework and then end up marking it myself because the teacher can't bothered (this is the case with the maths teacher, he is a long term supply and does not have classes in year 10-13) or say they don't have time. The English department manage at least weekly marking and it's a core essay subject with many papers to prepare their students for!

And then the senior teachers wonder why the students never do homework, go into years 10-11 with appalling study skills and results don't improve!

My advice is to contact her head of year or do you have parents' evening soon?

You don't say if it's the beginning or end of March. We've had Easter holidays, so no need to mark as no work done, and perhaps in the time before Easter it was copying notes, or a lesson which didn't require work in books (ICT lesson for RE perhaps, or research), so again, no marking requirement.

I used to teach 600+ kids per week, the majority of whom were KS3, so books go marked, but not weekly.

I've worked sixty hours this week and my books aren't all up to date. It's not the way I want it but unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day. I've had two free periods in the last two weeks because my Y11s have been coming for impromptu revision sessions and I can't remember the last time I actually took a lunch break because they haven't left me alone since they went on exam leave. All my planning etc has been done after school/at home. I've also had a Saturday revision sessions. This week I have 100 Y10 mock papers to mark (25 to a class, 2 papers each, at least 10 mins per paper) and 50 reports to write for Thursday. I also have a job interview and observed lesson. Guess what's getting priority (hint: not the job interview).

Teachers up and down the country are in the same position. Your DD will get the same treatment when she sits her GCSEs/A levels. If you want us to do more work, please write to your MP to get us more funding/more non-contact time/smaller classes.

I say this in the 15 minute break I've taken from marking on a Saturday night.

Thanks OP for making me feel more guilty

Everyone in my department (English) is catching up with KS3 marking right now after being thoroughly indundated with Y11, 12 and 13 coursework. We teach 3 different GCSEs and 4 different A-levels in the department and for the last two months the workload caused by coursework has just been huge. Now they are on study leave we have time to devote to marking books properly, doing assessments etc. It's not ideal but they don't give us extra preparation time when all the marking, cover sheets and coursework submissions need to be done so something has to get put on the back burner. They will get much more attention from now until the end of the year though.

Not something I'd panic over, to be honest.

My daughter did a History assignment once in this term and has never had it back. She has just finished her GCSE with the same teacher and his commitment to them was second to none. I'm quite happy I never thought to say anything at the time of the assignment.

I am a teacher and can say that amount of marking done does vary over the year for individual classes - there are times when some books don't get done as much as I would like, not through laziness but through sheer volume of work done (especially at this time of year for exam classes - which you will benefit from when your dd is older), but I have to say in terms of judging their understanding homework rarely helps as much as a lesson; it is much easier to tell if a child understands things in class. Homework is often a) rushed b) copied or c) completed whilst watching tv/msn. Also peer and self-assessment is much more useful as a learning tool than teacher-marked work, as all the latest evidence suggests. You might want to find out if the school is keen on 'Assessment for Learning' as this may explain things.

I mark every week, but there may be some situations where it appears that I have not marked.

1. the work hasn't been done and/or handed in. The dog might have eaten the memory stick.

2. the work was gone over as a whole class, and consequently self or peer marked.

3. the work was clearly not done by the student, eg copied, downloaded or done by a parent.

And then sometimes I fall short of perfection, usually with a good excuse.