Marking?

[justtheonethen]

Interested to know if any schools have made any changes to marking policies after ofsted has said that there is no concrete evidence for the impact of extensive and detailed marking on student learning?

It feels like it should be a victory but I can't see my school changing their policy or stopping marking and feedback scrutinies. In fact we recently introduced a new marking policy that is more time consuming than the previous one!

Very interested to hear what other schools do. Mark everything? Mark targeted pieces?

Primary or secondary?

We've had no change to policy but that's not surprising given my SLT! In my secondary we are expected to deep mark one piece per half term with students recording their response and then given the opportunity to act upon the suggestion for improvement including any literacy errors. Other work can be a tick and flick.

However there is a HOD for a core subject that demands the deep marking done once a fortnight and doesn't understand why she has such a high staff turnover

Developments points once a week. Rest is tick and flick.

I'm in primary, the marking is ludicrous.

Deep mark twice a week for each subject but ALL work must be marked and have a next step. It is so time consuming.

What is meant by 'deep marking'?

Targeted feedback at least once a half term. Progress highlighted on sheets. It's much better since one of our dept heads became an ofsted inspector! Much more importance placed on accurate pupil portraits and info.

Deep marking- highlighting where met success criteria, highlighting where haven't. Correcting grammar and spelling. Writing next step for children to address.

We are very obviously a minority but have been working towards reducing marking for a while now. We recently took the step to not mark books at all. Instead we use Seesaw, which is like an educational Facebook, to show pupil's learning and highlight the progress they are making. Teachers and TAs comment on all items that are uploaded onto pupil's individual feeds. We have kept books for pupils to write in but these are not looked at by SLT or coordinators.

justtheonethen

Thanks.

The thing that gets me is OFSTED may say reduce marking - then the parental complaints come in.

Deep marking once per fortnight. Every piece of work must have some level of acknowledgement - a tick/stamp/sticker.

It's ludicrous. We re-designed the marking policy last year. MLT wanted no more than twice per half term. Governors insisted on once per fortnight.

We mark every homework every child does. I'm secondary maths, so every child has 2 pieces of homework per week, I mark all of it every week, correcting mistakes, although quite often I will just change my starter for the next lesson to go over common mistakes from that weeks homework.

Other departments have different policies though, some departments mark one piece of work per half term, generally done in class in test conditions, other departments tick quite regularly but only ever deep mark tests. We don't have a while school policy for marking, just individual department policies, which we stick to for the most part (sometimes other things get in the way of marking, like last week I marked y11 mocks so years 7 &9 didn't get their books marked, I'll have to mark more work for them this week)

I'm very interested in Seesaw.

May I ask a question as a (y7) parent?

If books aren't marked much for English (and other written subjects), how are the pupils getting feedback on whether they are using SPaG correctly? Won't they feel that the teacher doesn't really mind/care about it if it isn't regularly picked up?

Sometimes I feel as if I as the parent am the only one encouraging and pointing out these areas. (DD is somewhat behind in this).

Oh, supplementary question. Do schools ever have a policy whereby PP kids get marked more frequently/deeply than others?

Not in my experience of PP pupils.
All subjects should be marking SPaG and subjects now have marks in GCSEs for it.
It would be impossible for a teacher to mark every mistake of every pupil they see at high school. I teach about 170 pupils a week (more than once). Pupils get one assessed piece deep marked and one piece in their book deep marked every half term - the rest is TICK and flick.
Pupils learn maybe by oral feedback and peer marking. They do. It learn by masses of comments in a book that they do not read.

Teen some schools have the policy of PP students work should be marked first, before the rest of the class as they are going to get 'less tired' marking.

Deep marking once every 4 lessons at my secondary school.

piece & elephant Thank you.

I totally understand it would be impractical to mark all spelling mistakes etc (and DD would get miserable with the coloured ink all over her work).
I also understand that the teacher marking everything in depth wouldn't work either.
But then with another part of my brain I get a little frustrated when I see errors becoming ingrained because they aren't picked up on (and I can't either as most exercise books stay mainly at school).
However I'm pretty happy and think you teachers do a great job.
Happy Christmas.

teen our policy is a maximum of 5 SPaG errors per piece of work so they're able to concentrate on and hopefully embed the correct things before the next piece of work.

I wouldn't at primary level but possibly yes for gcse mocks.

It is bordering on lunacy when you think about it. Ofsted are like “We don’t need to see it”. Schools go “Yay! Okay, we won’t mark everything but we will just mark targeted pieces in a ridiculous level of detail three times a half-term“

And you end up back where you started.

My old school put together a ludicrous five stage process for marking multiple assessments each half-term, which I won’t describe here, but which ended up being more work than the previous iteration.

I’m in primary and we have a no marking policy. It’s great. I have barely taken any books home this year. English maybe once a half term. Maths never. Other subjects never. We have to acknowledge each piece of work by ticking. We have to indicate some maths corrections and spag corrections with codes. We use whole class feedback or in small groups or 1:1 focus feedback as required. No written comments unless the teacher WANTS or NEEDS to. These are few and far between. Sometimes the ‘marking’ is just a note in our file on what the next lesson needs to cover (eg the next step or what needs to be gone over again). We do not have marking scrutiny sessions.
We are over two years into this and it has had no negative effect on progress but a positive effect on teacher workload and teaching/learning.

@Needmorecoffeeortea have ofsted been in during this time?

@millimat not yet!

Have you noticed any difference in the progress of children? I'd love your policy.