Amid the efforts to reduce workload, the marking of books has become a major casualty: carrying books home to read at home has become the go-to imagery to represent overworked teachers. 

But at our school, we still mark every book, every lesson.

I have some sympathy with the zero marking trend, and I’ve seen the successes some schools have had with this approach. 

In my setting, up until this year, marking a set of books used to take longer than the actual lesson. It became routine for me and, eventually, I noticed that I was always fighting the clock to get marking finished and therefore I was not actually assessing the work in the most effective way.

Obviously, something needed to change, but a ban on marking should not be the only solution for those in our situation.

Workload issues

We believe that assessment for learning should happen during and after every lesson. It should inform where we go next and be integral to our long-term planning, too. 

And if we are asking children to complete work and then not bothering to read that work, what sort of message are we sending out? If we can’t be bothered to read each piece of work, then why should they bother to put the effort into each piece of work?

Clearly, though, we had to find a way of doing this that is manageable, proportional and has an impact. Our former marking method was not doing that. We used to write a positive comment and a next step comment in every book for every lesson each day. Although this looked fantastic for book monitoring, it wasn’t really benefiting anyone. 

So we did something new. You can read all about it in the 12 October issue of Tes, or here if you are a subscriber. 

New approach

But essentially, we decided to reduce and limit the types of feedback that could be given and to use a code system instead of full written sentences in every book. That code would relate to a comment displayed on the IWB at the start of the next lesson. 

So can you mark every book, every day, for every lesson and not have an unnecessary impact on teacher workload? 

I think we have proved it is possible. This system enables our teachers to see exactly where our children are in their learning in real time, it facilitates better formative assessment and planning and it gives our students a reason to put maximum effort in at all times: they know that what they produce is going to be read carefully and appreciated. 

Stevie Devlin is a Teaching for Mastery Lead and NCETM Mastery Specialist and  Maths Leader, Key Stage Two Leader and SLT at  Bursted Wood Primary school in London