Marking Policies for Work

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Having just seen the teachers response to my ds's Art Homework, which makes it seem that she hasn't even looked at it, I was wondering what marking policies your schools follow.

It would appear that the days when you would be graded out of 20 or given A, C etc. are long gone.

Ds's school never seem to mark the work

I suspect they do. Every parents evening I have seen has had a list of assessment grades in a book for every child and they rule your childs line in the meeting to see where they are currently 'working at' (as it may be a tad different from the latest report).

It may be the grades aren't being communicated to the student and that's not good - if not their grade, they certainly need to know what they are strong in and how they can improve, if nothing else, and I imagine Ofsted would like to see that sort of evidence as well.

OP, what does an A mean? 20 what? What are the points for?

These are generally arbitrary measures which mean nothing. I know loads of random red pen makes parents feel better, but (yeah, hit me, I'm gonna go for it) it has been proven over and over again to have bugger all impact on students' learning.

I've just spent five hours marking a set of exam papers for one and a half classes. I am resentful, because this means that my lessons tomorrow are going to be pretty ropey because I just don't have time to plan them properly.

How many of those students will actually look at any of my comments? How many of them will use the information that I have spent hours writing to help them raise their grade? Maybe three might remember it vaguely. The rest of them will spend the whole lesson shouting across the room at each other trying to find out what marks their friends got.

Right. Think to yourself. Why do you want a random grade or number? What do you think it is:
a) A measure of the teacher's opinion? What if the teacher liked or disliked your child more than other students? Would this be a reason for giving them a higher/ lower score?
b) A measure of the ranking of your child within the class? Why would you want this? What on earth does it mean? You are creating some sort of artificial norm against which you are measuring success and this whole concept hinges on you wanting to be able to tangibly see your child doing better than somebody else's
c) A set of criteria. And what are these criteria? How on earth, in a subject like Art can you measure how well a child is doing? Really?

The very best sort of assessment is actually self-assessment, as you are supposed to be preparing students for their future lives in which it will be them who are responsible for assessing the quality of their own work. Thus helping them to learn how to evaluate it is the best form of learning, giving them confidence in their own achievements and certainty about the best way to improve it.

The piece of research most worth reading is called, 'Inside the Black Box' by Paul Black. It would make anybody question the purpose of assessment. Some very important points that he makes include:

1. Why do we assess at the end of a course? If the purpose of assessment is to help students learn, how can they learn how to do better from something that is done after they have finished?
2. If a test was valid proof of a students' result or ability, surely they would get the same result if they did it again? If you can alter your result, what are they actually a test of?

Sorry OP. You caught me at a bad moment. Since I read the research above (and other stuff too) and saw evidence for what I'd always known, marking puts me in a very bad mood.

BTW I didn't ask, but if you're child's in KS3 they won't be getting much marking done in exam season.

And balls, I know there are loads of spelling mistakes in the above. I seriously need to go to bed. Blind from excessive reading of rubbish.

Hi Tortu

Thanks for the reply - I understand that marking is a thankless task that takes up far too much of your time, time that could be spent in lesson prep or teaching or with a glass of wine

My ds Yr 7 actually does read the comments his teachers do write on his work (class and homework) and he tries to apply the suggestions made to his next pieces of work. I know this as the subject teachers who have actually done any marking of his work commented on it at parent consultations, much to my pleasant surprise.

My issue is that often no comments are made on his work at all and the often the comments that are made are not related to any previous comments. The comments could read 'You still are not ... ', or, 'You have done ... '.

Therefore, ds is completely oblivious to whether he is improving on the previous piece of work.

I only raised Art as an example as ds had to do a mini project (2 x A4 pages) on Gaudi comparing and drawing examples of his works, a biography etc.
The teacher's comment was that he could have done more drawings. Fair enough if one of the A4 pages hadn't been taken up with a drawing of the Sagrada Família and the other page with the other requirements of the set work.

As to why a grade - just thought it might indicate improvements or slip backs in ds's work - personally I don't give a flying fig about what the other children are doing, just if ds is doing his best and improving.

Sometimes, ds's peers get to mark each others work, which has resulted in children getting marked down deliberately. Or they mark them themselves so get outstanding pieces of work.

We do comment and literacy based marking. I correct every spelling mistake, and write out up to 5 words that need to be learned. I write a positive comment about something they have done well (hopefully relating to a previous target...) and set a subject specific target and possibly a literacy target. Before we assess the same skill again, we re-visit the comments made previously.

We don't set as much homework as some parents would like, but every bit is meaningful and worth doing, and marked in a way that should help the child make progress.

Once a week for the sake of once a week would mean less effective feedback IMO.

I am a secondary science teacher.

Fancy coming to work for my ds's school Fallen?

I agree with Tortu.

I'm an Engish teacher and the marking is insane. The parents at our school are quite demanding and will phone up to find out why work hasn't been marked. I teach 175 children; if I'm doing a quick book check, say 5 mins per book, that totals 14 hours. Our school marking policy expects me to do that every fortnight (at least). That's without taking into account the hours and hours I've spent marking mock exam papers and controlled assessments (some of the kids write for almost four hours on these). And that's all on top of planning lessons/making resources/hosting extracurricular activities...

As I'm an English teacher it's obviously essential that I examine the pupils' writing, so I do think marking is very important. However, it's also important that it's done in an appropriate way, so that it doesn't impact on the child's learning - which is inevitably the case when the teacher has no time to plan.

I want to streamline our department's marking and assessment policy at some point in the future. However, I need to get my marking done first.

Streamlining is the way to go! You need to think about what is beneficial and what is simply, as you say, a book check.

As I said, we mark less frequently than many parents (and SLT...) would like. But it is meaningful assessment. And I have argued long and hard for it.

Mind you, some of my staff complain too because they would rather tick a page and move on...!

OP,

Can I just start by apologising. I was definitely ranting last night! You do have a valid concern and I was utterly wrong to just dive straight in.

Freerange, I think we should probably butt out of this one as English is whole different and very hairy issue. Yep, I too have added up how long it would take me to mark my books in the way SLT would like. I too have also realised that it isn't actually feasible (or useful)!

If you do ever come up with a solution for streamlining things, PM me! I've recently got my dept starting to use stickers with the assessment criteria on. They just tick the relevant areas on which students need to focus. Initial indications seem to be that, not only is this saving time, but it is actually improving standards as students seem to prefer it. Perhaps something about it looking more official? No idea. Crucially, I have no idea how parents and SLT are going to respond!

Yes, sorry OP!! I came here this morning because I felt kind of bad that I had ranted and not really answered your query...

At our school we're expected to mark books every two weeks, give commented feedback every half-term, and have a tick on every page .

Of course that doesn't always happen in real life. It's very motivating to feel like a constant failure.

Oh and Tortu, I'll PM you anything I get done :) Love the idea of stickers. I tried something similar once and it was great, but not time to take it further as of yet.