To expect school teachers to actually educate my child?

[ICancelledTheCheque]

Maybe I'm being a bit PFB but this has really irked me.

DD is Y7 in a big academy secondary school. She showed me some work she had done - in three paragraphs there were six spelling errors and five grammatical errors. The teacher didn't mark up a single thing and just put big green ticks and irritating smiley faces on her work and wrote "excellent work" at the end.

But it wasn't excellent work. How is she going to learn if they don't flag this stuff up? Is this the norm these days? Doesn't bode well for GCSEs if so!!

I suppose that the question which needs to be asked here is:

'If the child cannot spell well, or use grammar correctly, is it appropriate to be marking the work against other criteria?'

In other words, pretty much all the teachers here are saying that they mark work against the success criteria set for that piece of work, and generally will not pick up errors that are unrelated to these success criteria.

The question we were posed, and which caused us to think really carefully about how and what we marked in English, was 'If a child is not writing, spelling and punctuating simple sentences correctly, why do we set and mark against any other success criteria?'

It is slightly different in other subjects, where one can argue that 'content' may take precedence over 'precision in written English'.

However in English, we are moving towards a policy where we mark first and foremost against success criteria based on basic grammar, spelling and punctuation (within reason - a child really going for an ambitious word but spelling it incorrectly, or learning a new grammatical feature such as the use of modal verbs, isn't penalised, whereas one spelling 'which' incorrectly always is), and only once that is secure do we mark against specific genre / content criteria.

Essentially, children pick up what you value. If you always mark against 'content' success criteria, that is what they value too. If you shift to mark against technical success criteria, they will respond too.
I'm not suggesting that every piece of work has to be marked against everything possible - that's not pfeasible, based on workload. However, if there is only time to mark against one set of success criteria in primary / early secondary, then perhaps it should be against grammar / spelling / punctuation until those are embedded and ingrained.

brasty - if I give feedback, it is because i expect the student to act on it "spelling and grammar need attention" is too broad and will not help the student move forward. I'd rather pick up on a couple of specific errors and "deep mark" SPAG in the appropriate piece of work, giving specific targets.

Correct spelling and grammar matter, any teacher should mark a student down for incorrectly using either. I survived a whole education like this with no denting of my creativity.

We get so many graduates through now who provide poorly executed work because of these exact reasons.

Surely the solution is to tell the child what their mistakes are and help them to correct them?

I've read the arguments as to why this isn't being done and they are not convincing.

You might have your reasons for marking in this way re place in scheme of work and objectives and so on. But those are things that are essentially your agenda.

A child's agenda is to get accurate feedback. This is not happening if they are not even told when they are spelling words wrong or making grammatical errors. It may not matter to you if all that you are concerned with is the narrow objective. But it matters a great deal if children are not given the opportunity to learn about spelling and grammar.

Also, the argument that you wouldn't correct such errors because you are assessing the quality of communication or whatever is a poor one - incorrect spelling and grammar is a massive barrier to effective communication. It jars the reader and detracts from the message and can even change the meaning of the message.

If that is the feedback, the student has to identify where the errors are then correct them. There is an obvious issue with that.

Or are you suggesting the teacher goes through and identifies the errors in every piece of work?

But surely just a comment about excellent work, will mean that they will think their work is actually excellent? When clearly it is not.

Ofsted would spank your arse
This is an image worse than that of dragon butter. Off to find the eye bleach...

Cantkeepaway - thank you for your post. It gave me hope for the future.

OP this would irritate me too. Ignoring mistakes might be motivational in the short term but I'm not sure that it's helpful in the long term. Mistakes are part of the learning process and nothing to get het up about. You learn from them and move on. Surely most kids can handle 'Excellent content. Please note my corrections for next time'?

It's worry that English teachers don't have time to correct their pupils' English (something I can well believe).

My dc attended school in a country where every single SPAG error in every subject was flagged in red pen. I was extremely grateful for this, since we were still learning the language ourselves and were unable to help the dc at home.

I'm not saying, by the way, that even when the objective is spelling or grammar I mark every error. For example, I might find a run-on sentence, highlight it and then ask a child to identify and correct any others in their work. Or highlight a word that is mis-spelled and ask them to find and correct it throughout the piece.

Primary marking does make this easier than secondary, though, because they can go back and correct it the following day. If I need to I can teach the feature that is giving the most problems at the beginning of the next lesson. In secondary, where there can be a long gap between doing the work, marking at and getting it back to correct, the feedback loop is less direct.

I'm an mfl teacher and pedant, so correcting spelling and grammar is a large part of what I do. However, a) there is truth in a lot of what others have said about the reasons for not correcting every mistake in certain types of pieces of Englisg work and b) the vast majority of kids usually take bugger all notice of spelling and gramnar corrections, as can be seen from the fact that they make the same bloody ones over and over and over again. I sometimes think that correcting errors in work is purely an exercise for the teacher, not for the pupil. All the pupil is interested in is the mark at the end.

• worrying

brasty and blunt - that's what teachers are saying marking properly isn't as easy as saying "needs some attention" this is vague, unspecific and does not relate to the lesson objectives.

A comment like "excellent work" will relate to the objectives of the lesson and the pupils should have been told what they need to do to achieve an 'excellent' so it will have meaning.
To make marking focused teachers select particular words and focus on them. If several students made similar mistakes it might be a lesson starter. Don't forget you haven't seen the lessons before and after the marked piece of work.

Ok, thanks for clarifying Blunt

How do I find the time to go through every single piece of work with a fine toothcomb?

Do I need to do that as well as spotting errors common to the class and planning teach accordingly?

Would you prefer I marked less frequently, giving students no positive feedback in between in depth marking?

Seriously, tell me how I can mark in depth more.

Ask my students if they value my in class "verbal feedback" (stamped in margin) - a lot of which is positive, some of which is improvement based. I don't pick up every error in that because I like to get round everyone - not go through 3 people's work in depth.

'Excellent work' is meaningless feedback, whatever the success criteria, by the way. 'Excellent use of persuasive devices throughout' would at least be specific. 'Oooh good, you did some homework and handed it in unscrumpled' is perhaps more honest....

Agree with that, can't

Charles "You might have your reasons for marking in this way re place in scheme of work and objectives and so on. But those are things that are essentially your agenda.

You might win the stupid comment competition! Yep that's right teachers are doing just what they want and following their own agenda. All my own way, no interference from government, no exam bodies to consider it's just me, me me.

I was trying to ignore that comment moomin

Smile, I'm not disputing that or the reasons why it's not being addressed. I can say my daughters teachers did it, she only left school less than two years ago, and my teachers, which were state school also did it religiously. I am not offay enough with the education system to understand why some state English teachers are now so overloaded they cannot correct spelling and grammar and don't comment on six errors in three paragraphs.

I do see however one poster saying a school failed an ofsted examination as teachers were failing to challenge spelling and grammar errors. Looking at the multiple responses, it seems some teachers do it as standard, and others do not but focus on one set of criteria only,

All I can say is for me personally, this is a minimum expectation. Maybe not all errors if they are repeated or whatever, but ignoring it to the extent the op is witnessing is not and never will be ok in my view.

Can it be done - marking at the depth the, "Its not good enough." brigade want? Yes of course it can.
All you have to do is remove 50% of the teachers current workload and classes so they can provide the kind of focus on the remaining students that would allow this.

Should I add a hollow laugh here, or a smiley face or something to show how ridiculous any expectation of that happening is?

All the pupil is interested in is the mark at the end

I've been wondering for a while about how to meaningfully eradicate grades in assignments in order to turn attention to comments instead.

Official advice to mothers of newborns in Sweden was not to put them outside for their usual daily naps when the temperature was below -10C.

I think that our attitude to cold might be a cultural thing.

I sometimes think that correcting errors in work is purely an exercise for the teacher, not for the pupil. All the pupil is interested in is the mark at the end.

I couldn't agree more. I'm a university lecturer (married to a secondary teacher, which is why I so often pop up defending them!) and when I first started teaching I used to spend literally tens of hours per assignment correcting every single spelling or grammatical error in the students' work, correcting every single incorrect or incomplete footnote, etc., etc. I quickly realised that I was completely wasting my time: the same students would make exactly the same mistakes in their next essay, and I'm pretty certain that most of them never even looked at the comments on the essay itself, just the mark on the front. Now I just write 'some problems with spelling/grammar/referencing (as appropriate), which have affected mark. Please ask if you need further clarification or help with this.' The vast majority never ask.

I've been wondering for a while about how to meaningfully eradicate grades in assignments in order to turn attention to comments instead.

This is a big point of debate in higher education. It's a great idea in theory, but in practice I find that if you tell them in advance that there won't be a grade for this piece they don't take it at all seriously, and I imagine if you didn't tell them they'd feel very cheated (it wouldn't even be possible to do this in a university setting).

I see what you are saying can't but with some classes I simplify the targets to excellent, good, needs improvement - these comments have specific criteria that students will have in their books. So being given one of these comments is specific. I agree without being linked it is not of much use.

Indeed, one of the targets might be 'do something'