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!!

oops - wrong thread!

Marking children's work in an encouraging way really does help them get better. It is easier to put effort into something you feel good at.

I make a note of particular mistakes and go over them in a later lesson - for everyone rather than just for one child.

In primary, we don't give grades, which is possibly why the children respond to comments quite readily.

In my DCs' secondary, where work has been marked it is also very seldom graded, unless it is a mock exam question (in which case the mark scheme is used) or a termly fully assessed piece (in which case the full assessment grid is highlighted).

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

my teachers, which were state school also did it religiously. I am not offay enough

Obvious joke?

YetAnotherSpartacus - in my experience this doesn't work. Comments don't generate data, and data is all anyone seems to be interested in. One department I worked in moved from marks to comments. They produced a grid for the kids to stick im their books to show what the comments meant... exccellent = 10/10, très bien = 9/10, bien = 8/10 etc . Utterly pointless. But they'd been told they had to move from marks to comments, so that's what they did.

I agree that marking should be useful and promote improvement. Comments should be detailed, specific etc. But I don't think that the vast amount of teacher time which goes into the detailed marking is remotely reflected in the effect it has on actual improvement of pupils' work. What is the answer to that? No idea.

Do you know how long it takes to do marking?

Who cares? What is the actual bloody point of taking stuff in to mark and then not bothering to do it properly as it "takes too long?!"
How are people ever going to learn to spell correctly and use the correct punctuation if the teacher never taught them in the first place as it could be "too disheartening to be told they were wrong?"
Jeez, Louise. I've honestly never heard anything so ridiculous.
Suddenly the amount of adults you see on social media who can barely string a coherent sentence together is making a lot more sense.

I'm worried about this!

Not got to secondary school age DC yet but my grammar, punctuation and spelling are not good and I don't think I would be confident to correct secondary school age level. Often I just don't see what is wrong. Mixed ability primary and secondary school, in both I never remember having English work fully marked - just a few things pointed out. I have improved (somewhat) over the years but I am sure it makes a difference, in real life, if the same content is presented with errors. There were a few in my class who did write beautifully (academic homes mainly) and I don't know whether they just picked up these things from reading more easily/inately or had home help.

Local primary school seem good but I feel I don't know what I don't know iyswim. I have bought myself a grammar book but not faced studying it yet!

Diddums. Why do we treat children with kid gloves these days? If something is wrong, be it spelling or grammar etc then BLOODY MARK IT SO!

This! It's unbelievable, it really is. You can't mark anything negatively in case it demoralises them?!
FFS.

Bluntness children and students have only ever been interested in the grades - that is not a new trend! If you weren't that way as a child you were in a small minority.

The only way to make a comment interesting is to say to improve your grade from a C to a B you must do xyz

It is really only worth highlighting a couple of key areas to target for improvement in the next piece of work - these could always be spelling and punctuation if you were happy to churn out kids who don't improve in other areas if spelling is genuinely a massive struggle for them (spelling is most definitely is easy for some and incredibly hard for others without any connection to overall intelligence).

There are always kids with pretty handwriting and the ability to spell who are unable to think critically or write fluently or understand any kind of moderately complex text, just as there are always kids with astounding insight and vocabulary and a way with words who can't spell for toffee. Neither type benefit from being told SPaG is more important than content.

glitterazi,

Ideally, yes, every book taken in to be marked should have everything fully marked.

However, as said above, a secondary English teacher may teach 120+ pupils in a day, all of whom will do some writing in every lesson, and homework at least 1x per week.

There is absolute truth in 'it takes too long' when the amount of time it would take to do adds up to more than the number of hours in the day!

As i say, we have shifted towards ONLY marking against spelling / grammar / punctuation for some students, rather than 'double marking' against content criteria as well. This could become more universal. However, there physically does have to be a limit to the amount of marking a teacher is expected to do, in order to allow them to sleep a bit and eat.

glitt no one has said that you can't mark anything negatively.

Comprehension is just as important as SPAG, you know..

My daughter is in yr 7. Her spelling can be hit and miss depending on the word. Her basic spelling is fine. She's a bright child and often writes a large piece for homework and also in school. I check through her books weekly (I'm nosey). Every teacher in every subject correct every single spelling mistake including adding a missing comma etc. They also write misspelled words at the side of each piece of work for her to learn.
On the other hand I have a son in yr 9 who struggles academically due to asd and a speech and language disorder.
His work is always much shorter, sentences rather than paragraphs. His too gets corrected in the same way.
But the teachers will still be positive about the written content of each piece of work.
It interests me. They both go to the same school but completely opposite ends of academic ability (not for lack of trying on my sons part).
I see it as they try and always encourage them to do it correctly and to their best ability regardless of their mark. Does this make sense?
I'd be baffled if this wasn't done. But then it's what we're used to.
I've waffled on a bit I'm sorry.

I get what some people on this thread are saying, that sometimes teachers mark against learning criteria to do with understanding of a concept or set of specific knowledge, and that they 1) don't have time to comment on other things and 2) it would distract the child's attention from those criteria if all they saw was a sea of red pen.

But what I didn't see with my DDs (now in their 20s, primary ed in England, secondary in Scotland) was specific teaching of spelling and grammar, and marking focused on those things with all errors corrected. Surely if you want to argue for sometimes focusing on knowledge and understanding, and you don't want/have time to mark everything in the same piece of work, you must sometimes have teaching and marking concentrating on technical aspects? I used to ask about it sometimes, and I was told that teaching these things separately wasn't sufficiently 'engaging' for pupils - which meant that by default marking was always about those other aspects, and never about spelling or grammar. I get the feeling from reading some threads that things may be changing in England, but friends' experiences in Scotland suggest that spelling and grammar are still very much the poor relation, mostly untaught beyond the very basics up to P4, and rarely commented on after that.

Really, names? Every single mistake in all subjects for every piece of work? How often does marking take place?

What are the class sizes like?

mornng I do specific teaching for SPAG. KS3&4.

I think state education is very poor and that parents can and do do a much better job than the teachers.
I don't blame the teachers though, they are expected to do so much and have very little autonomy in their profession.

Where do you suggest teachers find the time to mark everything with a fine toothcomb

If teachers don't have time to properly mark work, something has gone seriously wrong with our education system.

glitt no one has said that you can't mark anything negatively. Comprehension is just as important as SPAG, you know

Erm...

it can be very disheartening for a child to have work covered in red/green pen when actually they have done really well meeting the brief of creative writing

filling a page with red pen isn't the best way to draw out a writer- you want them to feel able to write without fear of constant correction

If something is wrong, be it spelling or grammar etc then BLOODY MARK IT SO!

I took this exact issue with a teacher at a secondary school open evening. His excuse was 'they don't want to demoralise the child'

Please don't think that I don't sympathise with workloads here - I have two friends who are secondary teachers and they work crazy hours. It's just a shame schools don't have the resources available to enable them to be more thorough with checking work.

To the goady fuckers previous posters pointing out grammatical errors in my previous posts - do you seriously think I check grammar and spelling on mumsnet in the same way that I check it when writing reports for clients?!

Oops, bold fail on the second part of the second quote.

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.

It really is still useful. For us it means we, DD1 parents, DD1 aren't only ones banging on and on about spelling. I'm very grateful that her teachers do seem to be picking up a lot.

We have done a lot of work with her at home with spelling - hugh amount really and she often get a word correct for ages only to revert. It is very frustrating but doesn't mean hard work isn't being put in.

It would have been very helpful if more of her primary school teachers had corrected wrong spelling - instead wrong spelling have got ingrained. I wish we'd started earlier - as younger children have responded better - rather than listen to the teachers who said it would come.

We are desperately trying to get across to her it does matter - pretty sure they will mark down in exams - and teachers marking backing that up is very helpful.

Plus it gives an idea - her and us where the persistent problem words are - often we just been told she a poor speller not what she is struggling with or where to start.

Marking all mistakes = possibly demoralising

Picking 2/3 main SPAG errors = fine

If the point of the exercise was to develop creative writing skills, we would maybe flag up spelling mistakes verbally but not take off marks for them as that was not the objective

Why can't it be both? Is there only one learning objective? Good spelling and grammar should be assumed all the time, not just when some learning objective says so.

You wouldn't believe the number of parents who complain about 'negativity' when I do this, you really wouldn't. If a piece of work is - for want of a better word - shit, as many parents will phone up to complain about me 'knocking their child's confidence' as might phone to complain about it not being picked up on

This annoys me too - teachers/schools choosing to do things or not do things to avoid parental complaint.

Let them complain about knocking little Johnny's confidence. Teachers are there to do the job not pander to parents' complaints.

Dancergirl: But I assume you expect them to listen to your complaints?