Are you spending your precious evenings ticking and flicking through students’ books, writing helpful comments to let them know how they could improve their work next time and using a polychromatic palette with a variety of stamps thrown in for ghoulish measure?

Looking back to my early career years and the amount of time spent battling a set of books and detailing comments for pupils to read, I can now recognise that the impact on pupils can only have been negligible at best. The impact on staff wellbeing? Well, that was significant.

And then it got worse. Over the next few years, we saw the lethal mutations that arose from the (admittedly astute) realisation that actually getting pupils to interact more with their feedback by formally responding would have more impact on their progress.

Horror marking policies

For some reason, it was decided that this should mean soul-destroying beasts such as double marking or its truly grotesque cousin, triple marking. Staff wellbeing was in the gutter.

Fast forward to 2016 and the report of the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group came to our rescue. It recommended that leaders eliminate unnecessary workload around marking, delivering the verdict that many marking practices had become burdensome. 

No kidding. I think we could have all told them that for free. 

A new approach

Furthermore, it concluded that all efforts in terms of written feedback should be meaningful, manageable and motivating, founded within professional judgement. 

Building on this, EEF then revealed the news that there is actually very little robust evidence that written marking has much impact - certainly not when you consider the amount of time invested in some marking practices.

Those days of cumbersome marking should have been over. But have they really been banished? 

These days, Twitter is buzzing with talk of whole-class feedback approaches, but many thousands of teachers are still suffering under a massive marking mountain. 

So, if you are still marking books every night, here’s what you could - and should - be doing instead. This is how my MAT took some steps in the right direction.

The vision

At the heart of our marking policy is a sentiment best summed up by a tweet from Dylan Wiliam: “This is why I keep on pointing out that the main purpose of feedback is to improve the student and not the work…”

“Marking policy” isn’t actually the best name for what we do, as there is no requirement to actually make any marks on pupils’ books! 

A pupil redrafting a paragraph about the reactivity of sodium, with accurate spellings and the teacher’s corrections, isn’t going to deepen their understanding of the alkali metals very much. 

Experiencing reteaching of the whole concept, by an expert, with opportunities to practise, is.

We change the student, not the work.

The method

Here’s the process we use for “marking” a set of books.

• Select a sample of pupils’ books, eg, 7-8 from a set of 30.
• Flick through the books looking for evidence to confirm what you believe the strengths and weaknesses to be based on your professional judgement. Also keep an eye out for literacy development opportunities.
• Fill in a whole-class feedback sheet, which features a presentation checklist for pupils to self-audit, boxes for brief statements on strengths and weaknesses and then some activities for pupils to complete (content and literacy based) following the feedback and some reteaching.

Is it meaningful?

Yes. You have shown the group that you know where their needs lie and you are actively addressing that need. You give them the opportunity to understand that content better, as a whole, instead of addressing surface features.

Is it manageable?

Yes. On average it takes a little over half an hour to sample the books and create the feedback sheet. We do this every six to nine lessons and it generates a full lesson’s worth of work for pupils.

Is it motivating?

Yes. Pupils are given the chance to relearn and improve their understanding. They get another chance to be successful in something they previously struggled with. I have also conducted pupil voice on the perceived efficacy of the approach and, the last time we checked in October 2019, around 80 per cent of pupils feel that the approach helped them to improve.

So, ironically, the best marking policies probably don’t involve much marking, they are just a more formalised opportunity to improve pupil understanding.

If your school is still trapped in a nightmare marking policy, this could be the wake-up call your senior leadership team needs!

Ian Taylor is lead teacher at Trinity Academy Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. He tweets @MrTSci409