Marking and feedback policy in Primary states school

[montlieu]

Hi All,
Can anyone shed some lights ?
the marking has gone considerably down since September at our Primary school, I have DC in year 5 !
The children have been getting so called ‘ticks’ single or double or stamped.
So in short a move away from traditional marking in favour of a vague check and, possibly, some oral group feedback.
It’s extremely disappointing and not really appropriate to primary school children who are still learning spelling, grammar, presentation etc and who thrive with feedback from beloved teacher.
Has some else noticed that too ?
Can anyone shed some light ?
We are in a very large trust primary in southwest London.
Thanks

Possibly the teachers just don't have time right now. If you're concerned you'd be better off getting in touch with the school

We aren't marking books at all at the moment, children are self marking maths, comprehensions etc and that's it. We don't touch children's books at all.

When the global pandemic is over you could ask the school.

Post lockdown we are not touching pupils books self marking only.

Pre lockdown a lot of our marking was 1:1 verbally with pupils at the time of working as this is more effective than reading marking after the fact.

Not sure why that's happening. Pre-lockdown, my Yr4 pupils would always get at least a sentence and a target at the end of every piece of work

Research shows that marking work after a lesson is ineffective and a huge waste of time compared to other methods so many schools are now moving to live feedback instead

There will be a marking policy. Nobody here will be able to tell you what the marking policy at your school is.

The best marking is often the marking that you can’t see. Verbal feedback.

What is a ‘so called tick’?

Feedback is much more effective than marking.

Try looking at the EEF research.
educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-blog-school-improvement-and-taming-the-marking-monster/

Your Children’s school has presumably decided that writing long comments in children’s book after they’ve finished a piece of work, which research shows has limited impact on learning, is not a great use of 1-2 hours per day of teacher time. They have directed the teacher to talk to the children while they are working, so misconceptions can be address right away rather than ingrained by practising all lesson. This leads to better learning, and has the added bonus that your child’s teacher has 1-2 hours a day freed up to do more useful activities, such as preparing resources for the following day, or having a life outside teaching.

Ask for a copy of their feedback/marking policy, if you can't find one on their website. If procedures have changed, the policy should be relatively new.

Live feedback and peer feedback is so much more effective. You don’t need to see masses of teacher comments. The impact of live feedback will be evident from the progress made/ misconceptions addressed etc as they go. That frees hours of wasted time writing pointless comments so there’s more time for the preparation of lessons and resources that respond to the children’s needs identified in the lesson.
There is a lot of recent research to back this up. Start with the EEF studies as mentioned by PP.

Thanks everyone. I see the point about the live feedback but the children are saying they are not getting it either. They just think the teacher doesn’t look at their work, which after a while demotivates then.
They just get a tick and say they don’t hear anything else orally. Thank you!