Feedback Is Worth 6 Months, Done Badly It Harms Progress

This is the education commute. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. Right. So today we're taking a close look at a very specific and honestly incredibly common piece of teaching culture. Yeah. A painful one. Exactly. I want you to just picture the scene because if you're listening to this, you've almost certainly lived it. It's 20 past six in the evening. The school corridors are completely quiet. You're sitting at your desk staring at book 14 out of a pile of 30. And the comment you're about to write in the margin of that book is the exact same comment you wrote in the margin of book six.

Right. Something like a good effort. Remember your capital letters. Yes. Word for word. And the funny thing is you probably didn't even notice you were recycling it. Right. It's just muscle memory taking over at the end of a really, really long day. Totally. I mean, the kettle in the staff room, it's gone cold twice already while you've been sitting there, but you keep going. Because, well, this is the job, right? You just keep writing. But here's the really painful reality of it all. And it's something you already know in your bones.

You know exactly what happens to Book 14 tomorrow morning. You hand it back, and the pupil eagerly flicks past that carefully written comment just to check if they got a sticker. Or a grade, yeah. And then it goes straight into the tray. Straight in. It's barely read once, let alone read twice. The ink is dry. but the actual impact is, well, practically nonexistent. Right. So you're sitting there with 16 books left to go, staring down a choice that nobody has actually put to you before. Yeah.

Do you keep writing these comments that, you know, feel wonderfully thorough, or do you stop for a second and ask yourself if thorough is even the job you're supposed to be doing? It's a huge question because it really strikes right at the heart of the prevailing orthodoxy in education. I mean, for decades, the absolute bedrock belief has been that more feedback is simply better feedback. More is more. Exactly. The expectation is that you mark everything, you mark it fully, and you mark it every single lesson.

Right. That's just the cultural definition of what a quote -unquote good teacher does. And the quiet assumption is that if you don't do that, well, you're somehow shortchanging the kids. But there's a major guidance report out there that actually spent years analyzing this exact 20 past 6 scenario. They looked at the marking, the recycled lines, the endless margins, and the evidence they uncovered. completely contradicts that whole more is better orthodox. I mean, it just blows it out of the water. It completely turns it on its head.

And it really moves us from this false, honestly exhausting assumption that volume equals value straight into what the actual data says. Let's get right into that data then. We're pulling this from the 2021 guidance report published by the Education Endowment Foundation. The report is called Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning. And what makes this document so vital is that it isn't asking how much feedback you should give, it's asking what makes feedback work at all. And it comes out swinging right there on the first page.

It really does. It opens with a massive, highly counterintuitive warning. The Education Endowment Foundation states clearly that not all feedback has positive effects. Wait. Yeah. In fact, done badly, feedback can actually harm progress and actively make a pupil's learning worse. OK, I have to stop and push back on that immediately for it because I'm sitting there at 20 past six, right? I'm sacrificing my evening. My kettle has gone cold. I'm literally writing my hand into a cramp. Yeah, I can understand someone telling you I'm wasting my time.

I can't even understand a researcher saying my feedback is ineffective or, you know. Inefficient, but how on earth can my feedback actually harm their progress? It sounds wild, I know. How does an exhausted teacher trying to help actively make things worse? It's a really shocking word to read in a policy document, harm. But think about the actual mechanics of what happens in a child's brain when feedback is done poorly. Think of a student's working memory like a tiny post -it note. If your feedback is this dense paragraph of three different critiques, you've basically written completely off the edges of the post -it.

Oh, I see. The people suddenly doesn't know where to focus, so they just freeze. Their brain literally drops the information because of cognitive overload. Wow. Okay, so the harm isn't malicious, it's physiological. Exactly. You've given them too much to process, so they process absolutely nothing. Precisely. Or, you know, consider the emotional angle. If the feedback focuses too much on the person rather than the actual mechanics of the work, it can severely damage their confidence and motivation. So they take it personally. Right. They internalize a critique of their effort as a critique of their identity, and then they just stop trying.

Yeah. The data from the Education Endowment Foundation is incredibly clear on this. The lever for student improvement was never the amount of feedback. Right. The lever is getting it right versus getting it wrong, because getting it wrong has an actively negative impact. So, assuming we get it right, assuming we, you know, write a perfectly calibrated post -it note for their working memory. What does the data say the positive impact actually is? Well, the Education Endowment Foundation toolkit shows that getting feedback right results in an average of plus six months of additional progress over an academic year.

Wait, six months? Yeah, plus six months compared to pupils who didn't receive that feedback. Plus six months? I mean, that is half a year of extra learning just from getting the feedback mechanism right. It's huge. That's the difference between a student struggling to keep up and a student completely mastering the curriculum. But I know we always have to look under the hood of these numbers, right? What's the security rating on that data? The security rating is very high. It holds four out of five padlocks in their rating system.

Okay, four padlocks is incredibly strong. But if the impact is really an average of plus six months, I'm guessing it doesn't have the perfect five padlocks because, well, classrooms aren't sterile laboratories. Yeah. Like, you can't control for every variable when you've got 30 kids in a room right after lunch. You've hit the nail on the head. That plus six months figure is an average drawn from a massive pool of 155 different studies. Right. The Education Endowment Foundation doesn't give it a perfect five because a fair chunk of those 155 studies weren't randomized controlled trials.

They were real world observations. Which makes sense. Yeah, they're messier, but they are also way more reflective of actual school life. 155 studies pointing to a six -month gain is impossible to ignore, regardless of the messy variables. So the volume of the feedback doesn't matter. The key is what the feedback actually consists of. Yes. But if getting it wrong actively harms the student and getting it right adds six months of progress, the stakes are incredibly high here. Extremely high. The report's recommendations must be pretty specific about what we are actually supposed to do differently.

They are. The Education Endowment Foundation report gives several recommendations, but for our 20 past 6 teacher staring at Book 14, two of them are just absolutely critical. Okay, lay them on me. Recommendation 1 is about the target of the feedback. Feedback must target the task itself or how the pupil is regulating their own learning. It should never target the person. All right, I want to dissect this, because targeting the person sounds obvious to avoid, but I bet we all do it accidentally. Oh, constantly. Like writing, well done, or you are so smart at the bottom of a page that is targeting the person, right?

Exactly. But we want to be encouraging. I mean, a massive part of teaching is just... Building up a kid's resilience true and writing well done feels nice for about four seconds, right? But it tells a kid absolutely nothing about what to do differently next time. It doesn't move their learning forward at all Remember that recycled comment on book six good effort. Remember your capital letters. Yes The good effort part is personal, it's well -intentioned, and it is entirely unhelpful for their cognitive development. It's really just a habit wearing a red pen.

Okay, that actually makes a lot of sense. So we strip out the ego stroking and we focus entirely on the mechanics of the task. Yes. But hitting the right target doesn't matter if it takes you three hours a night to do it, right? The report's second critical recommendation targets the clock, doesn't it? It does. Recommendation two is all about efficiency. Written feedback should be purposeful and time -efficient. The Education Endowment Foundation report explicitly warns against the assumption that more marking equals more learning. They strongly advocate for things like live marking in the lesson while the pupil is still working and can actually use the advice.

All right, let me stop you right there. I need to passionately push back on this because we really need to talk about the corridor reality of teaching. Okay, paint the picture for me. Purposeful and time -efficient is a beautiful, shiny phrase that looks fantastic on a training slide. But it has absolutely no connection to what a wet Tuesday afternoon actually looks like in a real school. Sure. Tuesday afternoon looks like 30 books in a pile. It looks like a school marking policy that explicitly demands every single piece of extended writing must have a full written comment in the margin.

Ah, yes. The bureaucracy of teaching. It's entirely bureaucratic. It looks like a head of department demanding evidence for an upcoming book look. And for those lucky enough not to know, a book look is when senior leaders sweep up a random pile of books just to verify that teachers are using enough red or green ink in the bungens. Right, checking the colors. Exactly. It looks like massive scrutiny folders that have to be filled with proof that you are doing your job. Teachers aren't marking live in the moment because the moment consists of one exhausted adult trying to manage 30 unpredictable kids for 40 minutes.

It's just survival mode. Yes. We write that comment at 20 past six because the policy demands proof of life. We do it to satisfy the scrutiny folder, not because we actually think the pupil is going to have some massive pedagogical breakthrough. Yeah. And here's the real tragedy. Every minute I spend at 20 past six writing a useless comment. is a minute I am not spending planning tomorrow's lesson. And doesn't the research say that the quality of tomorrow's instruction matters infinitely more than tonight's marking? I have to concede you are completely 100 % right.

Thank you. If a school's marking policy generates unread comments just to satisfy a scrutiny folder, it has built the exact monster The Education Endowment Foundation report is trying to warn us against. Yes. It is actively stealing time away from lesson planning, which is the undeniable foundation of good teaching. It's maddening. It's just manning to feel trapped between what the evidence says works and what the school policy demands you physically produce. So how do we actually escape this trap? The escape route requires changing the rules of the game entirely, and that brings us to recommendation three.

This one is specifically for the people writing the policies. The Education Endowment Foundation states that school policies should promote principles, not mandate methods. Meaning they need to stop telling us exactly how and when to hold our pens. Exactly. They explicitly warn against policies that over -specify the mechanics of marking. If your policy says, teachers must mark in green pen every lesson using full sentences, that is a terrible policy. Right. It constrains a teacher's professional judgment. It forces you to focus on the frequency and the color of the ink rather than the actual purpose of the feedback.

So it's not about proving you marked it. It's about whether the marking was actually needed. Yes. Which logically leads to a question I hear all the time. Is written feedback better than verbal feedback? Because a lot of policies seem to treat verbal feedback like it doesn't count. Like it's a lesser form of teaching unless it's transcribed as evidence. The Education Endowment Foundation report is incredibly clear on this. The choice was never written versus verbal. Verbal feedback is treated as equally capable of driving that plus six months progress.

The format simply doesn't matter. What matters is if it hits the target, the task, or the self -regulation, and if it's delivered in a way that lets the pupil actually act on it immediately. Let's ground this. Let's look at what this actually looks like in three different rooms, across different contexts, without needing that dreaded green pen. Sure. Let's start in a primary school setting. In primary, purposeful, live feedback might look like stopping the entire class mid -task. The teacher says, pencils down for 10 seconds, look at the board.

Right. They point out one specific worked example, highlight exactly what needs to be fixed or adjusted, and then say, Pick up your pencils and try that step again. That is such a fundamental shift. I mean it respects the limits of their working memory because it's immediate, it's verbal, it's highly task focused, and everyone implements it before the bell even rings. Exactly. No six o 'clock marking required. Okay, what about a secondary classroom? You've got older kids, much more complex subjects. So in secondary, imagine the teacher walking the room during independent practice.

They have a highlighter in their hand. They aren't writing paragraphs. They just lean over a pupil's shoulder. Highlight one single sentence and give one single verbal target. For example, look at the sentence, I need you to say why the character does this, not just what he does. Fix that now. Again, you're hitting the task, you're bypassing the ego entirely, and you're doing it while there's still time left in the lesson for the people to actually use the advice. Right, you're course correcting in real time. Let's do one more context.

What about a specialist setting? In a specialist setting, the feedback might be entirely nonverbal and instant. Imagine a pupil working through a task strip, which is essentially a physical step -by -step visual checklist of the activity taped to their desk. The moment they complete a step, the teacher gives a simple thumbs up or a sideways thumb. The feedback is connected to the exact physical action the second it happens. That's brilliant. Right. The pupil never has to decode a written comment later. It's instant, it builds their ability to self -regulate, and it completely bypasses the need for margin notes.

I love how clear that is. It really exposes how ridiculous it is to rely so heavily on delayed written transcription. It shifts the feedback from an autopsy of past work to a navigation system for current work. That's a great way to put it. So let's bring all of this high level policy talk back down to earth. Let's go back to our tired teacher at 20 past six. Let's go back to book 14. Yes, book 14. We are staring at it. We know good effort. Remember your capital letters is complete waste of ink and a waste of art.

time. We know we shouldn't just be fulfilling a quota for a scrutiny folder, so what is the immediate actionable fix right now, tonight? The fix is to stop recycling the old comment and instead write one single line that is explicitly tied to tomorrow's lesson and it must include a required response. A required response, meaning they can't just look at a sticker, feel good about themselves, and move on. Exactly. Remember your capitals you write. Underline every sentence on this page that is missing a capital letter. I will check three of them on Thursday.

Oh, that is entirely different. It forces the cognitive work back onto the pupil. Exactly. They have to actually do something with the feedback rather than just passively receiving it. And selfishly, for the teacher, what does this do to that? pile of 30 books. Well, it doesn't make the pile magically disappear, but it makes it a sharper, slightly smaller pile to get through. Right. It is significantly faster to write one actionable command than to craft a personalized paragraph of encouragement and critique. And that gives you back 10, maybe 20 minutes of your evening.

Which you can then pump directly into planning tomorrow's lesson. Because as we established earlier, if tomorrow's lesson isn't solid, All the feedback in the world isn't going to save it. Precisely. The Education Endowment Foundation research is abundantly clear that high quality initial instruction is the prerequisite for feedback to work. If the lesson was a mess, you simply cannot fix it in the margins at six o 'clock at night. So to really drive this home, I want you to try something tomorrow. When you're standing by the kettle in the staff room, I want you to pose a very uncomfortable question to your colleagues.

Oh, this is a good one. Ask them, when did you last actually see a pupil act on the written feedback you gave them? Not just read it, not just glance at the grade, actually act on it. I guarantee half the room will go completely quiet. Yep. Because we all know the truth. We are generating reams of text that goes nowhere and we're burning ourselves out in the process. It really is the ultimate test of a school's culture. Which brings us to the challenge for you listening to this right now.

Tomorrow, pull up your school's marking and feedback policy. Read it with recommendation six from the Education Endowment Foundation report in mind. Does your school's document ask how often you should mark? Or does it ask what for? If it only asks how often, it is probably time to start asking some questions of your leadership. But, you know, you don't have to change the whole school over, none of it. No, definitely not. Try this purposeful method on just three books tomorrow before you try to change how you mark all 30.

Small, sustainable shifts. All right, let's pull all of this together before we send you on your way. Four essential things to take off the drive today. Number one. Getting feedback right yields an average of plus six months of additional progress over a year. Right. And that figure comes with a high security rating of four out of five padlocks from the Education Endowment Foundation. Number two, the massive warning. Done badly, feedback does not just waste your time. It can actively harm pupil progress by causing cognitive overload or damaging their motivation.

Getting it wrong is literally worse than doing nothing at all. Number three, purposeful beats thorough. Live, task -focused feedback delivered while the pupil is actually working vastly outshines a nightly transcription exercise in an empty classroom. And number four, policies should ask what for, not just how often. School policies must promote the principles of good feedback, not mandate arbitrary methods and ink colors just to fill scrutiny folders. Excellent. As always, everything we've talked about is fully referenced. The Education Endowment Foundation report, The specific research strand and a full breakdown of what those padlocks actually mean are all linked in the show notes.

Definitely check those out. You can also head over to theeducationcommute .co .uk. We have a printable one -pager of today's framework waiting for you there. And while you're on the site, you can sign up for two free newsletters. One is designed specifically for staff and the other is tailored for parents and carers, adapting this exact same evidence so it's useful for whoever happens to be reading it. Right. Before we go, chew on this. If we successfully train kids to only act on live, verbal feedback, how do we prepare them for university, where feedback is almost exclusively delayed and written?

At a gap the sector hasn't quite solved yet. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. Safe trip in. See you at the gates.