"Whole Class Feedback" model in primary schools. Does it work?

[namechangetoanewname]

School have recently informed teachers will no longer be marking pupils' work but will be using a 'Whole Class Feedback Model' - giving general feedback after each work is handed in.

Apart from giving teachers less work to do, what are the benefits for our children's education, especially if there are 30 odd kids in the classroom? What if the 'general feedback' doesn't apply to your own DC?

I'm not sure about that. Teachers are teaching every single weekday all day unlike here where they have PPA. On top of this they run a club or two. They come in at 7am and don't usually go home until 8 or in some cases 11pm.

I can't speak for all schools in Asia but one I've seen had 43 in class including SEN and one in wheelchair who was severely disabled.

Just to add, this particular class had a one-to-one assisting the child in wheelchair but no one else except the teacher.

@namechangetoanewname you have seen one school ... and your experience of the UK is your own education and that of your DC. I could easily teach a class of 40 if they were well behaved and respectful - however we have parents here who constantly disrespect (like this goady post) and the children follow.

Can I ask how do you give feedback and stretch the most able within this model?

Also, about ten years ago, the Shanghai method of teaching Maths was popularised and there was a BBC documentary which had Chinese teachers trying to apply it in a high-performing UK school in Hampshire. The teachers were aghast at the standards of behaviour, the disrespect, the culture whereby it was ‘no biggie’ for parents to be informed about transgressions because it was almost unheard of in China and would be a huge source of family shame and the general emotional immaturity of UK teens - in one episode, Yr 9 girls derailed a morning’s teaching due to One Direction starting to split up.

In China, teachers were able to focus entirely on planning, teaching and assessment because they didn’t have to do what teachers do here every day in terms of contacting parents about behaviour, following up discipline issues and carrying out social care and parenting roles as a routine part of the job. Moreover, it appeared that very little provision was made to support students with any form of learning difficulty or disability in China. Teachers spent more time in school but a lot of it was used for planning. British teachers worked similar hours but did a lot of it at home.

How is stretching the more able different to stretching the middles or stretching the lower ability? As a PP said, teachers would clearly use whole class feedback to say "I noticed XYZ', I'd like you all to do abc... Stephen I'd like you to...Mr TA, please can you support the children we discussed (whichever ability level they may be)"
The majority of primary teachers know their classes (and their jobs) inside out.

It is well known that teachers in Asia are better respected as a profession and get more planning time. As another poster has said, when Shanghai maths was introduced in England, there were exchanges between the two countries. The reason transplanting the model here didn’t work so successfully was because the way in which teachers are expected to teach and the planning and preparation time given to teaching between the systems is very different. And of course, Asia is a big place- a school in rural China is not doing the same thing as a school in Singapore or Mumbai.

In the moment verbal feedback is the most impactful feedback for primary children. Written feedback post-lesson is largely a waste of time, especially for younger children. WCF is very effective when specific and when children are given the opportunity to act on that feedback immediately. It is not about teaching to the middle- it gives far greater opportunities for responsive/adaptive teaching.

And actually- WCF doesn’t give teachers less work to do- it gives them different work to do: work that is more focused and about improving outcomes for the children linked to the lesson objective and success criteria being taught, e.g devising the follow up activities that will allow them more practice inline with their needs, rather than writing time consuming comments on every book which children mostly ignore.

I’m not sure people understand what it is. You still look at every book and every piece of work. You just don’t write the same sentence 30 times.

@namechangetoanewname easily. That's why there are different targets.
Child A's target may be to add full stops and capital letters, Child B may have to use a further range of linguistic techniques and Child C may have a target to use a higher level punctuation. It just all happens to be coded.
Sadly whatever you are told you are trying to still create a barrier

WTAF?!

Thank you, this is helpful. I'm not trying to create a barrier, I'm only trying to understand as this is so new to me.

Managed well by a good practitioner is works really well.

Even in schools that still mark books conventionally the most valuable feedback your child can have is verbal - comments from the teacher about their work while they are working and once it is completed.

This should be incorporated as a key part of whole class feedback

There is plenty of research around this and the most effective feedback is immediate and verbal. It’s indisputable.

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/feedback

@namechangetoanewname when I was at school in the Netherlands, this was how homework was handled, for the most part. Occasionally someone was asked to demonstrate an answer or solution to a particular issue/complexity. Progress was assessed by regular internal tests - teachers were allowed to set tests for their class alone, and there were termly whole year tests too. Tests could range from 15 minutes on vocabulary or irregular verbs in MFL to whole lesson tests. In language subjects, essays were marked individually, but this would not be weekly.

It worked well.

Writing comments on kids' books has been found to be utterly pointless. Whole class feedback is likely to be more effective. The teacher looks at the books and then prepates feedback to address misconceptions and areas of weakness. This is the whole point of marking work.

The posts about “Asia” are highly entertaining. You can’t generalize about a continent of 4.5 billion people. Huge swathes of Asia have appallingly dysfunctional education systems. And China =!= Shanghai. The majority of Chinese children have rural hukou (residency registration); they are literally years behind those in the cities, and a high % drop out of education altogether in their early teens.

Signed: Someone who has spent most of her adult life in Asia.

This sounds like a load of utter bollocks to me.

At my primary school, there was such a wide range of capabilities and behaviours, so trying to give generalised feedback may ultimately be useless for some of these kids. I did all my work and was quite smart. The kid I sat next to was so badly behaved and didn’t care about his work that the teacher couldn’t handle him and quit. Would we have warranted the same generalised feedback?

If teachers want less work to do, stop giving out so much homework.

So where is the feedbacks for the kids who have done really well and made few mistakes?

I don’t think whole class feedback is as bad as what you are imagining. You can get a lot out of it, and a skilled teacher will have plenty of strategies to get the most out of it. 90ish% of the class might benefit, so it can be effective.

Is it a replacement for spending 15 minutes rigorously analysing a child’s work followed up with a 5 minute 1 on 1 conversation? No. But teachers REALLY don’t have the time to do that for each child because in a 1 hour lesson, there’s only 60 minutes and no one can change that.

The reality is that our children are more and more likely to be taught by a non-specialist or unqualified teacher, that the class sizes will be 30+, and the majority of children in a class won’t get any 1 on 1 time with the teacher. This is probably a strategy to reduce teacher workload so the school can cling to any remaining qualified teachers they have.

@MariaVT65 on the feedback sheet. Read the thread!

Targets on the sheet cover a range - I usually have 8 targets and 8 positives - they have a task directly linked to the target.

I still mark the books, I still put individual comments - what WCF means is I am not writing the same positive and target on every book. So I may write 'Wonderful work Bryan, you use amazing vocabulary S1 T3'

If this is the case then maybe OP should ask for further clarification from the school. Their post literally says the school said they won’t be writing anything on the actual work.

Writing comments in books after the lesson is an utter waste of time. Catching children and giving verbal feedback is hugely more beneficial. Comments aren’t read by the majority of the children. In maths writing a comment is pointless because you wouldn’t clearly be able to explain how to do it right in a comment, but verbally so much more efficient. Also, you don’t always know what they’ve done wrong unless they’ve done it wrong in front of your eyes, in which case why write a comment after the event rather that fix the problem on the spot.

The local schools in the two countries in Asia that I have taught in are incomparable to British schools. In both countries, children from early years are expected to sit still, copy, chant and not ask questions. In one country, corporal punishment is still used in school. In the other, suicide in primary years due to pressure around primary exams is an issue. In both, teachers are not expected to differentiate or teach outside of published resources and in both, parents are expected to engage a tutor. Also in both, pastoral care is not in a teacher’s JD.
How would all that work in the UK?