marking

This one is contentious.

Parents expect books to be marked; schools have a marking policy; marking can - when good - be a dialogue not a monologue and affect positive results.

BUT

Marking is hugely time consuming; it is one strand of effective pedagogy; it's effect is limited at best, questionable in general and pointless at worst.

Why do we do it?

To show a child how to improve.

How do we do it?

We read through their work and correct mistakes, set targets and show support.

What actually happens?

Schools have to (it seems) create policies - these policies are to police those who swing the lead.  These policies are effctively, hiding a body on a battle field:  as in, we know most of you do all this, we also know that some of you don't, therefore, this will only catch out the badies, or rather, make the baddies be gooder. 

However, what these policeis actually can run the risk of doing is creating huge blocks of work for hard working teachers; blocks of work that actually stand in the way of the actual work of teaching children.

What would an effective system be?

Bespoke to departments; created and monitored by them, for them.  Built around the student taking ownership of what it means and looks like to suceed.

Anecdotally, the best set of results I ever got was with a Year 9 group who struggled with some aspects of English - I never once marked their books, I made them do it all, peer, self and vocal asessment using hte language of the AOs.  When it came to the SATs they smashed it.

I got told off.