The three areas identified by teachers’ responses to the Workload Challenge as particularly burdensome were marking, planning and data and a separate report has been prepared on each.
On of the problems encountered in preparing these reports is the lack of a robust evidence base. Too often those involved in compiling the reports were forced to rely on professional judgement and ‘common sense’ interpretations of what little evidence there was. One of the themes which ran through all our work was the belief that marking, planning and data are proxies for teacher performance. On its own, this might be fine – proxies are often the best we can do when trying to get at what makes for effective teaching – the problem though comes from the disproportionate stakes attached to these proxies. Instead of focussing on teaching and learning, schools have become obsessed with attempting to measure, quantify and control; it’s much easier to see if a teacher has followed directives than to evaluate their effectiveness by actually looking at the quality of work students produce. Because of this, the proxies have gradually become more important than what they are supposed to represent.
The marking report was the one on which I was asked to work and, although I am content with its spirit, I am particularly concerned by the report’s opening sentence: “Effective marking is an essential part of the education process.” I lobbied hard for this to be changed to “Effective feedback is an essential part of the education process and marking is just one possible way for teachers to provide feedback to students.” Ultimately, I was over ruled but I want to set out exactly why the message published is potentially harmful. I wrote here about some of the differences between marking and feedback, and in this post I suggested that less marking might actually lead to more and better feedback. If marking is ‘an essential part of the education process” then why is it that so many successful education territories – many of whom do better than England in the PISA tests – don’t bother with it? Clearly marking is not essential but in the UK it has become so disproportionately and overwhelmingly important that even a room full of teachers dedicated to reducing unnecessary marking loads couldn’t conceive of it as anything other than essential.
This is a sorry state of affairs. I may currently be in a minority but then until relatively recently so were doctors who appreciated the germ theory of disease and adjusted their practice accordingly. There is no reliable research on any of the marking practices schools typically use and certainly nothing to justify compelling teachers to mark in a particular form or in a mandated colour of pen. To say more research is needed is something of an understatement.
Despite this, the message of the report is positive and unambiguous about the destructive power of pointless and ineffective marking. We stated that for marking to be effective it needs to be meaningful, manageable and motivating. This is, I hope, clear and easy both to understand and implement. I really hope the report is successful in challenging the false comfort of onerous marking practices and that the immorality of expecting teachers to sacrifice every evening and weekend even to be considered mediocre becomes a thing of the past.
The report can be downloaded here.
I raised an eyebrow at that sentence; glad to see that at least it wasn’t unanimously welcomed.
Yeah. I tried my best :/
Hi David,
Thanks for your work with report team. Am I correct in thinking that if standards are high, Ofsted would assume feedback is of a high-standard?
Leading to another question: if standards are not as high as they should be, and poor feedback is judged to be responsible for that, are Ofsted going to specify what the issue with feedback is? Is it teacher-to-student feedback or the fact that teachers are not using the feedback from lessons and performance 😉 to adjust their teaching or improve the structure of the curriculum? Because, if standards are not good, focussing on written feedback, for example, doesn’t seem to be the most efficient way to raise standards.
* high standard
Ofsted have tried to make clear that they do endorse a particular approach to marking or feedback> That said, one of the measures they judge schools against is whether teachers follow school policies. I worry inspectors do not have the necessary time or expertise to judge the quality of students’ work and will still be looking for explicit evidence of marking.
… I think I agree! Marking is mostly meaningless. It’s often a time sink to appease tick box middle management. If you haven’t checked – during the lesson – if they know or can do the stuff you set out to cover in that lesson then marking isn’t going to help.
I witnessed an occasion once, in a school, at the end of term, where a teacher and a TA marked all the books in one go, because there had been an unsuccessful job-share where neither half had taken responsibility. This was long after all the work had been completed, but was considered necessary because the policy stated that every piece of work had to be marked.
Thank you for trying so hard on our behalf! It’s my experience of ‘advising’ on our assessment policy in school, writ large.
Dear David. Thanks for this and for all your efforts on teachers’ behalf. I wondered if I could repost your post on the save childhood and give us back our education site as I think it would really interest petitioners. James.
Of course, you’re most welcome
‘although I am content with its spirt’ – is it my eyesight or are you missing an i ?! Good piece though thank you. I think teachers mark because of Ofsted and other such intrusions. In reality primary age children don’t really read comments (unless forced to and asked to respond) instead they value conversations and feedback that can be responded to immediately – not 24+ hrs later. If you visit a secondary school you will not be surprised to find a distinct lack of marking in books. Our secondary colleagues marvel and are surprised by the level of marking in our pupils’ books. As Juliet says I think it is extremely important that schools have an agreed policy on marking that everyone sticks to and no-one can challenge.
Uh-oh. Point 17 of the report – ‘ineffective marking’ – looks a lot like my school’s actual marking policy. Good thing we’re on holiday at the mo, or I’d be having to find Sonething Else To Do.
My marking is apparently officially “Inadequate”… it doesn’t fully comply with policy. However, the policy’s marking merely replicates the dialogue I have with students as they are working, which our tame county inspector described as “exemplary”, and my students, on average, are making 50% greater than nationally expected progress… and in a PRU, in which students merely attending school is often colossal progress in comparison with their previous schools… shame about the marking! Whatever happened to judging by outcomes?
“meaningful, manageable and motivating” – all completely subjective, wouldn’t you say?
There is always going to be a member of SLT with 3 classes of 8 students who manages to pontificate to mere foot soldiers about how they manage to mark work in a meaningful way every single week… and then they show off the marking of the not-yet-burned out NQT who will be able to sustain it for about two years before going part-time…
It is true, other (successful) education systems don’t to it. We don’t need generic subjective advice, we need specific directives so that the managers of our schools stop driving teachers insane.
[…] Workload Challenge Part 1: Marking […]
It’s not just workload that is driving teachers out of the profession. Bullying and intimidation of staff has led to the loss of over 40 staff (teachers and TAs) in three years at my previous primary school. Pupils are leaving too so numbers have approximately halved. Ofsted have given successive “notice to improve” ratings, but take no action. The situation continues to get worse, so now school is in a redundancy situation for the second consecutuve year.
Hello David
Thanks for your work
I read recently somewhere that you proposed an ofsted criteria which could identify schools with a high turnover. I support this. Furthermore an idea has been floated that any teacher who moves job can fill in an anonymous ‘reasons why I left’ type form. This would allow ofsted to identify a rogue head perhaps. (I could name at least one). Anyway this is an excellent idea and thank you if it was you who suggested it.
I did propose that here: https://www.learningspy.co.uk/leadership/workload/
Whoops!!!! Have just realised that story was in the TES on 1st April.
Sorry for being so gullible everyone. I just got carried away with wishful thinking.
Our marking is so completely onerous that the children rarely have their work marked when it’s returned. But it will be ‘in hindsight’. Challenges are then completed several days or weeks later rather than the next lesson. My books are works of art to someone scrutinizing them – our school got outstanding recently and our marking policy was hailed as a triumph – however the value to the children of my 15 to 20 hours of marking per week is negligible.
To make matters worse, the work we set is now to appease the marking policy too, just because it looks amazing in our books. A good half of my lessons are taught by my TA so I can try to get my books done. But that doesn’t t matter, because our books are outstanding.
Our school scrutinise our books regularly- weekly or fortnightly – and our feedback is always presented as a s*** sandwich. They use it eek out ever more hours of marking using a plethora of codes, a rainbow of colours and daily challenges (most of which I now do myself!). But the marking is whitenoise to the children, a hallucinogenic mishmash of irrelevant nonsense to the untrained eye.
I don’t teach. I don’t plan (well, not properly), I don’t bond with the children. I’m not funny or entertaining and my lessons are dull. Ive not always been like this. I’m failing my class and its destroying me.
But it’s ok, our books are outstanding and our marking policy’s a triumph.