The Purpose of this Policy
We recognise the positive value and impact that marking and feedback can have on student progress, and we can demonstrate excellent marking and feedback in school. We recognise that teachers’ ‘checking’ of students’ progress and students’ own self-assessment of their own progress and attainment are central functions in the learning process. We are committed to driving standards forward further.
This policy has been created to ensure consistency, to share best practice and to promote a philosophy of ‘getting it right first time’. Whilst Subject policies for, marking and feedback will dictate the details that are most suitable for their specific purpose, Faculties will all follow the core principles covered in this policy. Consistency within the Faculties is also important and can come from consistent high standards rather than unvarying practice.
This Policy has been designed in consultation with Heads of Faculty and Faculty Coaches.
Aim
All forms of assessment, marking and feedback serve a single purpose – to advance student progress and outcomes.
Definitions
Summative Assessment – assesses students’ progress over a major project, essay or unit of work, at stated intervals (eg at the end of the unit), recorded in the style and terminology of STEPs or public exams (eg 4D or Grade 7). It is completed, as a minimum, at least twice per half term for core subjects and once per half term for non-core subjects.
Formative Assessment – assesses incremental students’ progress over a shorter timescale, and focuses on elements of a learning objective. It takes place at least once a week for core and non-core subjects. It takes a variety of forms, including targeted questioning, verbal feedback, self and peer assessment, verbal or written feedback (eg. ‘www; ebi’) and dot-marking. Formative marking uses green-penning as the standard vehicle for students to practise improvement.
Principles
1. Marking is Valuable
- It values students’ effort for learning and promotes pride, and a feeling of self-worth amongst our students
2. Marking is Informative
It allows teachers to identify:
- whether knowledge & understanding is secure enough to move forward, or whether consolidation work or a different approach is necessary. If assessment is of a skill, it should be able to demonstrate application of the skill with increasing independence or confidence over time.
- which students to target from additional support.
3. Marking is Collaborative
The responsibility for progress is shared with students, teachers, school leaders and parents.
- Written work offers evidence of progress over time where careless mistakes are marked differently to errors resulting from misunderstanding. The latter may be best addressed by providing hints or questions which lead pupils to underlying principles (correction evidenced by green penning); the former by simply marking the mistake as incorrect, without giving the right answer.
4. Marking is Manageable
We follow the key findings of the Independent Workload Review Group report, ‘Eliminating unnecessary workload around marking’ and the Education Endowment Fund review, ‘A Marked Improvement’. These can be summarised as:
- Any marking practice that does not have the desired impact on student outcomes is a time-wasting burden for teachers that must be discontinued.
- Whole class marking strategies such as “feed-up”, “feed-back” and “feed-forward” is encouraged to reduce the workload on staff. (Taking feedback one step further)
- Verbal feedback provides this opportunity, for example, through a whole class plenary or 1:2:1 dialogue between teacher and students. This may occur during lesson time.
- Exercise books belong to the students and their work must show their progress over time only.
- Progress should be checked on a weekly basis so as to inform lesson planning and to intervene swiftly where required, both of which enable students to progress faster.
5. Marking is Rigorous and Regular
We emphasise that to have the most impact, detailed marking and written feedback should only occur on formative assessments. We believe that:
- Acknowledgement marking is unlikely to enhance student progress.
- Verbal feedback has the same merit as written feedback, so long as students’ outcomes show evidence that progress is at least good as a result of the feedback. This means that green penning shows an improvement in the quality of written work.
- Self and peer assessment is effective when students are clear about the outcomes they are expected to achieve. Skills used in order to access the knowledge, application or evaluation of content are defined. The self/peer reviewed work articulates what has been done and what needs to be done to improve. This encourages students genuinely to own their learning and to share this with each other.
Practice – A Whole School Approach
In order to be effective and efficient in promoting learning we expect variations between different subjects and different age groups of students. However, we have agreed that in all subjects we are expected to adopt this core practice.
Core Practice
1. All work in books/folders is accompanied by a clear purpose i.e. title, classwork/homework and a date. Both are underlined using a ruler.
2. Teachers check progress in books or folders at least once every three weeks. This may be more often in some core subjects than in non-core subjects.
3. Presentation skills (date, title and technical vocabulary) are always checked. SPAG Codes are used.
4. Marking models high expectations (spelling and grammar is correct).
5. Teachers’ comments are completed in clear, legible handwriting.
6. Students respond to feedback with green pens.
7. When books are returned, time is provided for students to make corrections and improve identified areas through green penning.
8. All books show evidence of improvement through formative feedback.
Recommended Practice
1. Assessed work is to be accompanied by success criteria (format to be decided by Faculties).
2. All books are to show a clear journey of progression, although the format of this may differ according to the subject.
3. All teachers are to highlight where the pupil has hit the success criteria. This may be in the form of a written comment or they might choose simply to highlight the actual work.
4. All teachers to use the language of Bloom’s Taxonomy when advising pupils to improve in www & ebi. Teachers select the right level of Bloom’s to challenge the child without inhibiting them
SPAG Codes
| P | Punctuation missing/unclear |
| SP | Spelling mistake |
| WW | Wrong word |
| AP | Misuse of apostrophes |
| || | Paragraph needed |
| ^ | Word missing |
| 0 | Circle to show incorrect use of capital letter, comma or full stop |
| (one tick) | Good point |
| (two ticks) | Excellent point |
| ? | This doesn’t make sense/unclear |