Why does the NEU say that teachers should not be expected to mark work during the pandemic?

[Thenagainmaybenot]

The national education union says that:
'Worksheets and textbook pages for maths and English can work if they are already used in school and all children have them at home. However, teachers cannot be expected to mark work. Schools should not be setting SATs tests or mocks at this time.'

Why shouldn't teachers be expected to mark work? Fair enough they shouldn't be marking as much as they do normally, but (say) 1-2 maths and english tasks per week to be marked is surely reasonable?

Totally possible and not unreasonable to mark work. I’m in another country but we had children take photos of work and submit via classroom, dropping and picking up physical paperwork at/from school should be an option (with appropriate quarantine) if IT access can’t be made available to all. It makes no sense at all to suggest that children should be without feedback for months on end and of course they will not make much effort with their studies if they feel there is no one “out there” to appreciate it. (Very few children are entirely self-motivated to study).

Can anyone give a real reason why expecting teachers to mark work (a standard part of our job) is such an imposition at this time? I appreciate that all comments about teachers are automatically considered goady but many teachers are managing to do this both in the U.K. and across the world. It just feels like the unions have an negative attitude towards everything which doesn’t do teachers any favours in the long term.

am just disappointed that a union that calls itself the National Education Union is not more focussed on delivering an education! Naive I know

I'm just disappointed that yet another goady thread has no link to follow. Just the GF"s "version" of what has been said. Naive, I know :o

Because marking work when you have no idea what/how much help the child had is completely pointless? Because marking is often meaningless without the opportunity to model the correct method/explain the error? Because getting into a useful dialogue about the work with every student will be very time consuming and teachers actually have quite a lot on their plates at the moment? Because getting into that dialogue with the students who have the technology, space to learn, adult support etc will widen the gap between them and those who have chaotic home lives?
Or because teachers are lazy. That's probably the answer, go with that one.

neu.org.uk/advice/coronavirus-distance-teaching-and-learning-primary-teachers

Point 9 is what I copied and pasted.

Thanks, that didn't hurt a bit, did it.?

Just says don't mark, not not give feedback. As has been noted by PPs.

Whilst I know that advice is still there, the other thing to appreciate is that was set right at the start when the government postponed the curriculum, so there wouldn't have been anything to give feedback on. Teachers also needed time to adjust to new methods and trying to give feedback to lots of email/photo submitted work would have been inefficient and wouldn't have provided much development for children at start.

Also I know several schools who brought all of year 11 in for mock exams just as schools were due to close as they wanted to cheat some evidence in case they could use it for the GCSE grades. This would have created ridiculous amounts of work for teachers which ultimately would serve little purpose.

Many schools and teachers are providing feedback to learning. Quite a few use online programs which is a little easier given we cant really collect paper.

Union guidance has to account for the crazy and unreasonable heads/schools unfortunately.

🤣🤣🤣 at just getting kids to ‘drop off’ work. The students at our school without technology are the ones that take two buses to get into school. Not sure how you think they can get there to drop off their work. I also wasn’t allowed into school because of my health conditions.

As has been pointed out ‘naive’ is thinking marking is what is important rather than feedback which can be given in many different, far more effective forms for remote learning in many cases.

Bluechameleon thank you. Some of those points I had not considered. However I still think that marking/critical feedback is desirable rather than completely useless or impossible.

I have also searched the link for 'feedback' in case I had missed something. Nothing comes up.

Can someone show me where it says to give feedback? I can't find it.

How does the teacher mark it? Print out every piece of work, write on it and rescan it and send it back? Don’t be ridiculous. What about the parents without internet? When we were doing it here, I looked at the work in the photos the children sent, wrote the marks for each exercise using instead of a tick like this. 1. 2. x (followed by the correct answer or a short explanation) in the comments. I then gave the overall mark and written feedback. It took very little more time than marking on the document itself and was clear what was meant. As op said, if schools have children without tech access, they need to have a plan B for them which might involve having physical work on paper to be picked up from school. But there is presumably something of that sort in place anyway unless those children have been left with no work at all for the past few months.

If it has said 'teachers should not be expected to mark work but [insert appropriate level of workload here] feedback should be given in the following ways' that would be fine.

MoreW1ne thanks - it would be totally appropriate for a 2-4 week gap in children being at school. But at well over a term - not so much.

Neither of my children have had any worked marked during the entire lockdown.

On iPads you can write on photos, so some work could be marked that way. Not saying it would work for every subject, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done at all.

In saying that, when I talk to friends of mine who teach, plenty of them are ignoring what the unions are saying, and doing what they think is best for the kids they teach, which in some cases includes marking.

‘ Because getting into that dialogue with the students who have the technology, space to learn, adult support etc will widen the gap between them and those who have chaotic home lives?‘

Hang on, what? You would rather actively withhold help from those who are lucky enough to be in a position to learn because it will widen the gap between them and the others? Rather than wanting the best that can be managed for each child under the circumstances?
That’s an awful reason.

Primary and secondary teachers here electronically marked and returned all work uploaded. Used a photo editing tool to do a tick/x, more detailed feedback was typed. Or voice message for younger ones.

Thank goodness, as:

1. I hadn't time to work out complicated maths

1. It was a good motivator.

I looked at the work in the photos the children sent, wrote the marks for each exercise using instead of a tick like this. 1. 2. x (followed by the correct answer or a short explanation) in the comments. I then gave the overall mark and written feedback.

Sounds fab. Are you in a position to know how much attention did the children paid to this, and how it benefited them?

(I am marking btw. It’s a lot of work and I have no idea whether any of them even look at what I’ve done.)

I guess the distinction between marking and feedback is not necessarily clear. Some very successful schools have no marking polices but they will absolutely be providing feedback. And I think education professionals will understand that ( which is who the union is representing) but I can also understand who it can look to someone else. Feedback has a massive impact on learning , but ineffective marking is time consuming and research shows has little effect.

Exactly - I think the motivation aspect of having a teacher cast a critical eye over your work is huge for a pupil.

On iPads you can write on photo

Yes, if you have a suitable iPad and an Apple Pencil. These are not cheap.

having a teacher cast a critical eye over your work

This is not the same as marking.

You won’t find ‘feedback’ in that document because the NEU weren’t suggesting no feedback was given they were suggesting it wasn’t going to be possible or necessary to mark work.

For lots of work you can send home answers which can be ‘marked’ by the student or a parent (if student is very young). Why would it be better for all that work to be scanned, printed/marked online, sent back? When the child can get immediate feedback at home?

It would then be useful for me to see the ‘marked’ work so I can give feedback to class and plan next steps for the class but I don’t need to make an onerous task of ‘marking’ it all.

@Thenagainmaybenot

Exactly - I think the motivation aspect of having a teacher cast a critical eye over your work is huge for a pupil.

Totally different from ‘marking’.

If it has said 'teachers should not be expected to mark work but [insert appropriate level of workload here] feedback should be given in the following ways' that would be fine

The union cannot tell teachers what to do in practise.

My children are primary. What I am talking about here is the difference between a teacher asking for work to be given in and replying with 'Well done Sam, good use of expanded noun phrases. I look forward to varied sentence openers next time' and a teacher not asking for specific work at all, and when it is sent in replying with 'Thank you Ruby it is great to see what you are doing'.

The first is what I think all teachers should be encouraged to do, and I can't find the NEU saying that.

Genuinely honestly not being goady but what IS the difference between marking and feedback? My six year old has only had “well done” on anything he’s uploaded. No idea if it’s his usual standard or not.
I teach post graduates and for me feedback is FAR more onerous than marking. If I’m going to give feedback then attaching a Mark is easy, It’s the feedback that takes time.