‘To Mark or NOT to Mark?’

Over the last 12 months I have been interested to read the numerous articles in the educational press on the topic of marking. Having ‘been around’ for quite a long time in the business of education ‘good ideas’ and the ‘best way to educate young people’ come and go.

However, one integral element of the learning process that has changed very little over the years is marking. The ticks, initials, smiley face stamps and possibly some hand written teacher comments explaining if the work was ‘good’ or not have been for years a very familiar sight in student books. More recently, in an attempt to evidence that high quality feedback is being given to students and that they are responding to it, many teachers across the country have been ‘burning the midnight oil’ day after day in an attempt to keep up with what I feel is a misguided attempt to evidence the feedback and marking process for external audiences.

There are numerous stories of teachers in schools ‘triple marking’ every piece of written work – the student does the work, the teacher feeds back in writing, the student responds in writing and then the teacher responds in writing the student response – Madness!

We don’t do this at John Hanson.
If/when you get to see your child’s books, you will not see a lot of written responses from teachers or ticks, initials or smiley face stamps for that matter! We are very much in agreement with the wealth of education research that says this form of marking has minimal impact on student attainment/progress while taking hours for teachers to produce.

contd below . . . . .