Unmarked Homework

[shebird]

DD had some quite big homework tasks last term, fairly time consuming project type things. It transpires that one subject teacher has since left without marking the work and another teacher has never given any feedback or mark on a particular task.

Is it a bit much to expect someone to look at this work bearing in mind the time and effort put in by keen Y7s. It is a bit much to threaten kids with detentions for non completion of homework and then leave it sitting on a shelf for months collecting dust. What sort of message does this send to students?

I am so tired of teachers setting homework that DC spends hours on but dont even collect, never mind mark. I have to tell my DC not to do homework but he is to young to understand and ends up wasting time drawing stupid pictures on useless topics, no one ever looks at. Why just why?

IT was the old teacher who should have marked it not the new teacher. I have been in a similar position with class changes due to maternity - I made all my new classes write my name in their books when I took over as previous teacher had not marked the book since September. I flagged it with HOD who told me to prioritise and marking work set by someone else was not a priority.

I agree that it should not be up to the new teacher to mark lots of work when another has left but shouldn't someone step up to get the job done, HOD maybe? The teacher who left had the work long before they left but didn't bother.

This is a massive bugbear of mine. I have two dcs in secondary and lots of their work goes unmarked. The one in year 11 hasn't had his chemistry book marked all year. That's inexcusable.

Yep, I know the feeling. Happened to our son - spent a couple of week of classroom time doing a project on the crusades, supplemented by several hours at home. The teacher had said he wanted a 5-10 page report including lots of background, illustrations, and analysis of who did what and what went wrong for each side. Our son did a masterpiece and really put the effort in because he had mixed results throughout the year. Teacher never even bothered to ask for it to be handed in, let alone marked it. VERY demotivating for him.

Exactly Badbadbunny it is demotivating.

I sometimes feel that some teachers set homework for no other reason except to tick the box for their superiors so they can say I covered that module and set a homework task - job done. This is not an anti homework rant, I'm all for it, but setting homework especially big projects or and not bothering to look at students work is just rubbish teaching in my book.

Teachers have a lot of pressure and workload, but part of their job is to mark homework, even if they put a brief comment like good, need to write more, you haven't answered the question. I was looking through DD's geography book this week, first term she was getting A/A* for her work but still with constructive comments. This term, not even a tick - I wonder if teacher has assessed she's quite capable and not bothering to even look.

Apparently some of this work is supposed to go towards the teacher assessing what level they are working at. Makes me think that some of the levels given in her last report are made up and mostly guesswork.

When ds got a report in November, I emailed his three science teachers to ask how they decided what grades to give him as he hadn't had any tests that term and they hadn't marked his books. I didn't get a reply from any of them.