Marking and feedback

Overview

At The English School, we will ensure that students get the maximum benefit from their education through an entitlement to regular marking and feedback from staff. This will enable them to understand their progress and achievement and guide them in what they need to do next to improve.

Objectives

• To monitor, evaluate and review students’ current stage of progress, and identify their next steps for improvement
• To give students accurate feedback on their progress and achievement
• To promote a positive self-image and a growth mindset for students, thus encouraging them to value and take pride in their work
• To celebrate students’ achievement and progress
• To set targets for improvement
• To standardise the marking procedures throughout the school
• To achieve consistency in marking within departments
• To identify good practice and share in departmental meetings
• To enable students to self-evaluate their work and take responsibility for setting their own targets
• To enable students to engage in peer assessment
• To establish a common approach to marking literacy in all subjects
• To provide evidence for assessment, recording and reporting

 

Frequency of marking and departmental marking policy

Every Department develops its own marking policy, which is agreed by the SLT Line Manager. This ensures consistency of marking within a department. To ensure consistency across all departments, the School Marking Policy acts as an overarching policy that is then individualised by each department as appropriate. Although consistency across a department and the school is important, this can come from consistently high standards, rather than unvarying practice. Therefore, frequency and other aspects of marking are determined by students’ needs and subject requirements rather than a ‘one cap fits all’ approach.

All departments clearly specify a minimum number of marked pieces of student work per term per year group/course. Departments can decide this based on subject requirements, in other words, marking student work is going to take different forms in different subjects. It will not be the same in English as in Maths or Science or Design & Technology.

Practical, project-based subjects need to have regular marking, even if a whole project may extend over a period and this is outlined in departmental policies. All departments ensure that marking is regular and timely and that formative feedback is given.

All department make their marking criteria available to students.  Subject level/grade criteria are made available to all learners in student-friendly language. Ideally, copies need to be inserted into student exercise/workbooks. This helps students to identify where they are at and what they need to do to reach the next level/grade. Communicating assessment criteria involves discussing them with students in terms that they understand and by providing examples of how they can meet the criteria in practice.

All departments aim for a marking policy based on the principles of effective marking. Marking every piece of work and giving high-quality feedback, is not feasible. Marking should make a difference in learning, be reasonable, practical and allow the teacher to have a good work-life balance. Teachers should view marking as constructive feedback. In other words, a conversation with the child about what they have done well and what they need to do to improve.

All departments ensure that adequate revision takes place for all courses taught. The Departmental Marking policy should, therefore, refer to a frequent past paper practice that enables students to fully familiarise themselves with the format of the exam and provide them with opportunities to improve their knowledge, understanding and skills over the syllabus taught.

Work scrutiny and sharing of good practice

Here at The English School, we have agreed on procedures for sampling and looking at student work, which will be conducted annually, based on a work scrutiny timetable decided by Heads of Department and the Senior Leader in charge of Teaching & Learning. The primary aims of work scrutiny are:

• Have an impact on student progress

The major aim is to establish whether progress in long-term learning is taking place.  Work scrutiny, therefore, should enable us to see things over time, such as the quality of writing improving (or not), concepts and skills developing, errors corrected and not made again.

• Quality Assurance

Work scrutiny involves processes that look at teacher practices against a set of success criteria that determine effective marking and feedback that impact learning and enable our students to improve their performance. Work scrutiny is about collecting the evidence that we are progressing in terms of marking and feedback, which will enable us to achieve progress in meeting our T&L objectives.

• Professional development

Work scrutiny processes also involve opportunities for teachers to first, establish what they are doing well and then highlight the areas they may need support in and, therefore, offered the opportunities to develop further.

• Sharing of good practices

At the English School, we believe that effective practices in marking and feedback within and across departments should be shared, to ensure that work scrutiny does have a positive impact on teacher development.