Do teachers not mark books anymore?

[Heckythump1]

DD just finishing Y2, brought home all her books yesterday (including some Y1 books that were kept for moderation) not a single thing has been marked? No spellings have been corrected? There's the odd tick here and there, mainly in the maths books.

Is that normal? Her spelling is awful, which I suspect isn't helped by never being told she's spelling the same words incorrectly over and over again!

I'm a year 5 teacher and children don't read what's been written or look at what's been marked. I spend ages doing it and I have to nag them to look at it. I'd say especially at year 1/2, it's written feedback isn't as good as verbal.
Look at the schools marking policy which should be on the website and if youre unhappy, have a chat to the teacher.

Short answer - no they don't mark. Ridiculous.

Short answer. Yes we do and it’s a ridiculous burden on the teacher and not effective in the grand scheme of things. We do it for OFSTED, for management, for parents. The children like to get stars on their work (we do this too) but they either don’t or can’t read our detailed feedback. Much more effective to stop the class and deal with a misconception.

Why? Care to elaborate?

The written marks are not for the child. They are for the parents. My 5 yo does not care about and cannot read about the marking. But I do.

I choose to educate my DC privately as it was the only school that was proactive with learning, and provided a real sense of partnership between parent and teacher to enable DC to achieve their potential and enhance learning.
At the end of each week, I get a newsletter which states what the DC will be working on the upcoming week. I spend Saturday morning prior implementing games which introduces that learning eg putting the right number of pom poms in a numbered cup. I also get very brief daily feedback on how DC did on the main tasks completed that day.

Surely, a child can only excel and create a love for learning by teachers and parents working together. What good is it for me to get any feedback at the annual parents evening or see work at the end of the year?

I’m amazed at how many teachers on here have accepted and justified the substandard level of education their school is providing. I absolutely sympathise with the heavy workloads and management admin, and I am not suggesting at all that teachers should do any more. However, I was expecting teachers to write here that they know what they are providing is not the best education for a child, but its the best they can deliver in the circumstances. But all I see are teachers defending the education their school gives and defending the compromises they are making.

I'm a primary teacher and we mark but there is a move away from long comments. We have different teachers colours to highlight things done well and things to improve, or a list of success criteria which we tick off. I teach KS1 and for younger ones would highlight up to 3 spelling mistakes on key words and get them onto rewrite. We are discouraged from highlighting too many spelling mistakes.

Oh , get over yourself!

Current research doesn’t support marking in detail. It is an ineffective tool and can be counterproductive, off putting for lower achievers and unhelpful for higher achievers as it encourages reliance on the teacher to pick up mistakes (when ideally you’d want higher achievers to be trained to do this themselves). We do it though, because it’s expected, because children like it, but mostly because of parents who can’t grasp that things have moved on in the 20 or so years since they were at school. It’s not ‘substandard education’ to adopt new evidence informed practices. Detailed marking of every book for every child in primary for me means at least 90 books a day. I mark on rotation and in detail with the child when I can. Substandard my arse.

That’s what you’re paying for.
I doubt your child’s teacher has 35 in her class and half of them with behavioural needs or SEND or EAL either.
You have no idea.

Current research doesn’t support marking in detail. It is an ineffective tool and can be counterproductive, off putting for lower achievers and unhelpful for higher achievers as it encourages reliance on the teacher to pick up mistakes (when ideally you’d want higher achievers to be trained to do this themselves). We do it though, because it’s expected, because children like it, but mostly because of parents who can’t grasp that things have moved on in the 20 or so years since they were at school. It’s not ‘substandard education’ to adopt new evidence informed practices. Detailed marking of every book for every child in primary for me means at least 90 books a day. I mark on rotation and in detail with the child when I can. Substandard my arse.

Exactly this. Most people moaning about lack of marking haven't actually read the research - there is loads of it.

Feedback has a positive impact on attainment (EEF).

Written feedback has a lower impact than feedback as a whole. (EEF)

To have any impact at all, children need time to implement feedback.

So if I read my pupils’ books, think ‘they all have weaknesses in speech punctuation’, not put a single pen to paper but tell them in class the next day that this is the case, and teach a lesson focusing on speech punctuation in which they get to practise correct usage, that will be MUCH more effective than me marking every incidence of incorrect speech punctuation, saying nothing and teaching the next lesson on relative clauses as initially planned.

Feedback has a high impact, marking doesn’t . It’s vital schools base policies on what has impact on learning, not pleasing parents. However this should be communicated effectively so parents understand the rationale behind policies.

Chuckling at parents who want books sent home weekly so they can see the in depth marking. When do you want the marking to take place if the books are at home?

@cantkeepawayforever , exactly. Planning a lesson based on the children’s misconceptions is a much better use of time than writing comments 30 times that children take no notice of.

Predictably - someone has posted a reply like this.

This sort of public contempt is why many teachers are leaving and there is a teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

A lot of Inset is about safeguarding and SEND these days as there is sadly so much need. Certainly not 'coffee mornings' but I doubt anyone here will convince the teacher bashers to believe anything else.

I expect my reply will trigger a swathe of posts to explain to me how lazy my colleagues and I really are. I don't think I'll log back on to read them as the ignorance is so very depressing.

Ex teacher here. (And I didn't leave because of the pay.)

Can you imagine if a patient told a doctor that they should be using a 13 gauge needle to sew them up after an operation because they think it is a much better idea than using butterfly strips and their mum was sewn up with one twenty years ago when all the evidence shows that butterfly strips have a far better outcome. ( sorry, I'm not a doctor so this might be complete gibberish but you get the gist!) So why is it considered acceptable to tell a teacher how to do their job when all the evidence we have shows that actually the way they ARE doing it is more effective!

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

No, teachers don't seem to mark books as much as they used to. Please bear in mind they only get 13 weeks holiday a year, and spend a good portion of the time they are meant to be at work having coffee mornings inset days or going on strike as they don't get paid enough. They don't have time to mark books.

You have not the slightest fucking clue, have you? Coffee mornings I expect you're one of those parents who regards school as child care, in place for your convenience. That's why you throw your toys out of the pram when schools have the temerity to actually provide training for their staff, like statutory safeguarding etc. Who cares about that,eh? I expect you think they should do that in the evening or at the weekend, if at all.

I don't understand how a teacher can possibly give 30 children verbal feedback for each piece of work in each lesson?! Surely that means some children's work doesn't get looked at properly/at all and errors/issues get missed?

Because marking 30 books for all the lessons they do every day would be more manageable? I'm a secondary teacher, but I imagine verbal feedback is much more useful with younger children. You need to remember that the feedback is for your child, not for you. The teacher is teaching the child how to improve, not sending a message to the parents. That's what parents evenings and reports are for.

Taking my example above - say I have 3 or 4 groups of children, in terms of their performance today. 1 group I identified during the lesson, so I did the verbal feedback and support in the lesson. Tomorrow, they will have an independent task matched to the needs I identified today.

One group ‘got’ speech punctuation fully correct. I gave an extension task for them today. After a brief intro, they can work independently.

Two groups need new input on speech punctuation. One group is missing the punctuation before the final speech mark, one group has more fundamental difficulties. I will teach the new lesson to both groups, but pitch the task appropriately for each group. One group will work with me initially, so ai can instantly pick up on their errors as they arise (eg on mini whiteboards). The other group are specifically looking at punctuation before the final speech nark, so they will self check and then peer mark just for that feature.

The only groups whose work I will need to mark tomorrow will be the extension group and the group from today working independently on a specific task tomorrow. The latter group will work with a TA if I have one, who will give ‘live’ verbal feedback. Only the extension group need ‘marking’ and they are the group most likely to read and respond to it.

Verbal feedback does not have to be 1:1 for 30 children. It can be, but it can also be group by group, and can be during teaching, rather than on a ‘final piece of work’.

Better-run schools have policies that promote timely feedback, not marking.

If you have raised the question because you seek to understand why the manner in which feedback is given has changed over time in schools, read your school’s marking policy, read some of the current research regarding marking, and then, if you still have questions, make an appointment with your child’s school’s Director of Studies.

If you have styled an opinion as a question to cast a thin veil over its true function because you have made a judgment on a subject that you lack the qualifications, information & experience to make, I urge you reconsider. Being a parent does not qualify to to judge the quality of a teacher’s skills or the usefulness of a school’s marking scheme, and expecting teachers to perform tasks simply because parents like to see them is in some ways comparable with expecting GPs to prescribe antibiotics because patients expect to receive them: a waste of time, a waste of resources, and harmful (at least to the health of teachers, if not to the pupils, though I observe that some pupils and parents seem emotionally dependent on written praise and reject everything else: heaven help a teacher in an independent school who dares to write a suggestion as to how a pupil might improve his or her homework).