It’s interesting how ingrained the attitude is, that the more marking and teacher ink on the page, the better the teaching and the better the learning.
Some people perhaps, aren’t interested in engaging with what actually makes good teaching a good learning, but instead, what gives an obvious indication of time spent by a teacher on something…..and teacher pen delivers that.
There are lots of really good points made on this thread about feedback, about effective teaching and effective learning and where teacher and peer and self marking and other forms of feedback and review fit I. With that. But some people aren’t interested in actually thinking about it and considering what good teaching and learning involves….just whether there is lots of teacher pen.
In my view, this isn’t an issue about independent or state education. Good teaching and learning is good teaching and learning. Good and bad happens in both sectors.
Parents paying fees like to have obvious visible signs of what their. Mo year is paying for….that is understandable. One of the the things people can latch onto is the amount of marking or teacher ink. It is an easily visible and measurable thing. But again, as mentioned upthread, it’s not necessarily the sign of good effective or efficient teaching, the teacher who marks every piece of written work produced in class or Hwk in a book will spend countless hours on that, especially in written subjects. Is that the most effective use of their time which is finite….for those are so keen on it? If it means their lessons and teaching is less well prepared and effective, surely all the ink of the pages is t the best use of time. So it does have to be seen in that context too.
Teachers in some independents will have smaller classes so a lower marking and individual feedbacking load. That doesn’t mean they should be doing more marking and using the teacher pen than their state school counterpart, or that is the best use of the extra time their smaller classes might give them. Instead, there are many other things they could use the time for to benefit their classes. But these might not be so visible to parents or such a clear sign if ‘getting value’ from fees, so independent schools will often be under pressure to deliver more marking than might be actually useful and an effective use of time…..and who loses out…..well the kids, as they do in all schools where teachers do too much marking and can’t then do the things that matter more.
As everyone says, there is a place for teacher marking, in the traditional sense that people think if it as in teachers reading work and writing on it. But that’s such a poor little part of the whole process and if someone had lots of that without the other stuff, they would be having a poor education. Good teaching involves making sure students understand the succcess criteria for tasks or types of tasks before doing it. Marking without explaining those things first is a waste of time and often meaningless too (random ticks and comments like ‘good’ or telling a student they haven’t included something they didn’t know they needed to) and it involves the student looking at their work whilst it is in process and/or after completing it and annotating to show where things have gone well and not so well - it’s all about being at a point of awareness of what is required and knowing when your work is good or not and how to move forward. The effective teacher shows a student how to do this, so they can do it and move forward. It is teacher directed and not something a student magically learns to do themselves without help….but if they don’t learn this and only ever know if something is decent, because a teacher has written on it, how can they ever move towards the independence and progress all students need?
So an effective teacher provides success criteria for work..verbally, on paper, by other means. They scaffold tasks so students can meet criteria. They help students assess their work…by giving verbal whole class or small group or individual feedback, or providing mark schemes or sample excellent answers or sample weak answers, or exercises where students use mark schemes and mark themselves to understand poor, mediocre and strong work. They give exercises which involve students re-doing parts of their own work in light of these exercises. It’s a process of learning and moving forward and making progress with the individual tasks and then taking what’s learned onto the next task. All if this requires teachers planning such exercises and spending time in class with students. It’s so much more valuable that randomly spilling ink and saying nothing.
And still there is a place for the teacher marked piece of work. There’s a place for a teacher to mark a test of short answers or an essay of whatever. That could involve comments written in teacher pen, or marks made on a mark scheme or feedback sheet. But that’s just in part of learning.
Those so sure that more teacher ink=good teaching and less=bad teaching, just think a bit more about what good teaching and learning is actually about. And whatever experience your child is having regarding assessment, useful questions to ask them include;
- did you know what you needed to do, to do well in this task before you did it?
- do you know what you did well and what needs improvement in this task?
- do you know how to improve the area that needs improvement in this task or in another like it in future?
The answers to these Qs show if your child is learning. And much of this isn’t down to how much teacher ink is on the page.