53% Put Marking Reform First. The Evidence On Marking Is Weak

This is the education commute. Absolutely. So I want you to picture a very specific and probably very familiar scene. It is Sunday, about half past seven in the evening. You're sitting at the kitchen table and right there in front of you is a pile. Oh, we all know the pile. Right. It is a pile of books and it is exactly 31 books high. So far you have managed to get through. Four of them. And for each one of those four, you have written a comment. Yep.

That comment took you about 90 seconds to write. And then underneath that comment, you have carefully written a target. Right. And next to that target, picking up a completely different color pen, you are looking at the child's response to last week's target. A response which, you know, you now have to acknowledge. You make a mark. You tick it. Exactly. You tick it. And you push the book aside. You pull the next one toward you and you just keep going. Yeah. But somewhere around book 11, this entirely honest, somewhat defeating thought arrives in your head.

Yeah. You look at the pile and you just wonder, does anybody read any of this? And that. That underlying sense of futility at book 11 is exactly why we are focusing on this today, because we are currently on the third in a run. through a national leadership qualification. And what we are doing is taking it a cycle at a time, reading the public evidence underneath it rather than reading the course itself. You're getting right to the sources. Exactly. The overarching topic for this one is leading teaching.

And specifically, we are looking at the part of leading teaching that just completely consumes a teacher's Sunday. Well, before we pull this apart, I am putting myself firmly in the chair of the person with that pile of 31. books naturally I am the class teacher at the kitchen table and I want to say right up front that I do not think marking is pointless right of course not I'm not saying feedback doesn't matter but the sheer volume of it I mean it's mad it really is which means I need to put myself in the chair of the person who writes the feedback policy because ultimately the sheer volume you are dealing with on a Sunday is my fault as the policy writer yeah Let me start this off by reading you a single sentence because this is the sentence that surprised me the most when preparing for this.

It is not from a teaching union. It is not from like an anonymous education blog. It is a direct quote from the Department for Education's framework for the headship qualification. Let's hear it. What does the Department for Education? actually expect a head to do about this. So the framework states that the head should ensure the feedback policy, and I'm quoting this exactly, acknowledges that written marking is only one form of feedback and that staff consider effective and time efficient ways to provide high quality feedback. Wait, I just want to make sure I'm hearing the status of that sentence correctly.

Yeah. That is an expectation placed on training head teachers. Yes. That isn't just a document giving them, you know. permission to ease up if they want to. No, it is a stated expectation. It is something a head is expected to have done. Wow. I mean, if that is the explicit expectation for the top down, we really have to figure out where this immense volume came from in the first place. Because before we can start cutting down that pile of 31 books, we need to know how universally this burden is actually felt.

across the profession and to understand the origin of that volume we have to look back a decade right in 2014 the government ran the workload challenge they asked teachers directly what was driving their workload and the resulting data was unambiguous very unambiguous reform of marking policies was the highest workload related priority for 53 percent of respondents over half I mean, 53 % of the people who answered the workload challenge said this one specific task was their top priority. Yeah. Not just an issue, but the absolute highest priority.

Over half of the profession. And the momentum from that carried forward. Two years later, in 2016, the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group published a report on this very issue. Right. They concluded that written marking had become, in their exact words, Unnecessarily burdensome. Unnecessarily burdensome. Yes. And they followed that up by stating that all marking should be driven by professional judgment and it should be meaningful, manageable and motivating. You know, there is a deep, dark irony there. How so? Because those three words, meaningful, manageable and motivating, have simply been lifted and slapped onto the top of hundreds of marking policies ever since.

Right. Yeah. They usually just sit there as a neat little heading floating directly above like. Three dense pages of strict, unmanageable marking requirements. Yeah, the intention is just completely swallowed by the bureaucracy. Which brings us to the core tension here. If marking is the single biggest workload issue, what does the underlying evidence base actually say about its effectiveness? That is exactly the question I want answered when I am staring down book 12. Like, what does the research say? This is the piece of public evidence I would want every single leader to sit down and read.

In April 2016, the Education Endowment Foundation published a review of the evidence on written marking in partnership with the University of Oxford's Department of Education. The review is titled, A Marked Improvement with a Question Mark. With a question mark. Because, you know, time isn't infinite. If I am spending 90 seconds per comment, I need to know that is the best way to spend that 90 seconds. Exactly. The researchers were asking that exact practical question, and their main finding is written in language you rarely see in an academic review.

Really? I'm going to read it slowly because it is crucial. The review found, quote, a striking disparity between the enormous amount of effort invested in marking books and the very small number of robust studies that have been completed to date. a striking disparity between the effort invested and a very small number of robust studies. It continues in its main findings. The quality of existing evidence focused specifically on written marking is low. This is surprising and concerning, bearing in mind the importance of feedback to people's progress and the time in a teacher's day taken up by marking.

OK, I need to just pause and process what you just read. The single biggest workload item for 53 percent of teachers in the workload challenge. The thing that eats a quarter of my Sunday. It is built on an evidence base that the Education Endowment Foundation explicitly describes as. low quality. That is precisely what the review states. And it breaks down why the evidence is so weak, too. Why is that? Well, there is a fundamental lack of large -scale, robust studies. Most of the research that does exist is either very small in scale, or it takes place in higher education, or it focuses solely on English as a foreign language.

Right, which isn't the same thing. Exactly. It is incredibly difficult to translate findings from a university setting directly into a typical primary or secondary classroom. Furthermore, Most of those studies only examine very short periods of time with very few identifying any long term outcomes. OK, but I have to throw a red flag here. Go ahead. Because I know how this game of staff room telephone works. Somebody hears a summary of this review. They walk into the staff room and they announce the Education Endowment Foundation says marking doesn't work.

And that conclusion would be entirely false. Right. The review anticipates that misinterpretation and is incredibly clear on this point. I have to deliver this correction in full because it's vital. Please do. Weak evidence about marking is not evidence that marking is weak. I will repeat that. Yeah, say it again. Weak evidence about marking is not evidence that marking is weak. All it means is that nobody's done the studies. Ah, I see. So. If a school has a highly confident marking policy, say, demanding three different colors, on every single piece of work, every single week, that policy is confident about something that nobody has actually established.

So the evidence isn't saying it's bad, it's saying it's unknown. Exactly. But since the broad evidence base is weak, we need to know what actionable findings actually did survive this review. Like, what stood up to scrutiny? Five key findings survived the review, and they directly address the mechanics of what you do at the kitchen table. Okay, what's finding number one? Finding number one, quote, careless mistakes should be marked differently to errors resulting from misunderstanding. Okay, so to translate that into action, those are two completely different cognitive problems.

Right. A misunderstanding means I need to provide hints or questions to help the pupil grasp the underlying principle, but a careless mistake. I should simply mark it as incorrect and nothing more. Yet most policies demand the exact same written response for both. Exactly. Finding number two. Quote, awarding grades for every piece of work may reduce the impact of marking. particularly if pupils become preoccupied with grades at the expense of a consideration of teachers' formative comments. Put simply, the grade eats the comment. Yeah. You spend all that time writing specific feedback.

Right. And the moment a grade sits next to it, the pupil stops reading. Finding number three states that targets must be as specific and actionable as possible in order to increase pupil progress. Specific and actionable. Got it. Then we arrive at finding number four. Quote, Pupils are unlikely to benefit from marking unless some time is set aside to enable pupils to consider and respond to marking. Set aside, meaning properly timetabled, literally planned into the lesson. Right. Because if the pupil doesn't have time to act on the target, then those 90 seconds I spent writing it were spent on nobody.

Precisely. And then finding number five is the one that completely shifts the Sunday workload. Let's hear it. Quote, some forms of marking, including acknowledgement marking, are unlikely to enhance pupil progress. Acknowledgement marking, the tick, the initials, the I have seen this written in a different color. That is exactly what I was doing at Book 11. That takes up a quarter of my Sunday. And the review is stating clearly that it is unlikely to help. Which leads to the overarching mantra the Education Endowment Foundation offers for this entire approach.

They state, quote, schools should mark less in terms of the number of pieces of work marked, but mark better. OK, but that review from Oxford and the Education Endowment Foundation is from 2016, which makes it nearly a decade old. It does. If we are deciding policy based on public evidence, how does the newer guidance move this argument forward? Well, the newer guidance shifts the conversation away from format entirely. In June 2021, the Education Endowment Foundation published a guidance report titled Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning.

OK. It moves the argument forward by laying out three core recommendations. First, lay the foundations for effective feedback with high quality initial teaching that includes careful formative assessment. Second, deliver appropriately timed feedback that focuses on moving learning forward. And third, plan for how pupils will receive and use feedback using strategies to ensure that pupils will act on the feedback offered. I am looking at those three recommendations and I am noticing that not a single one of them mentions a pen. And that omission is entirely deliberate.

The report highlights that the written versus verbal debate is essentially a seesaw that never settles. The format doesn't matter as much as the underlying principles. The principles of good feedback are the things to focus on. So let's map those principles back to the national leadership qualification. How does the Department for Education's framework actually codify this for a head teacher? The framework embeds these principles explicitly across four statements. I will read statement 3 .16. Teachers use information from assessments to inform the decisions they make. End quote.

Pupils must be able to act on feedback for it to have an effect. Which echoes finding number four perfectly. Timetabled response. Exactly. Statement 3 .17. High quality feedback can be written or verbal and is likely to be accurate and clear, encourage further effort, and provide specific guidance on how to improve. Can be written or verbal. It is written directly into the framework that verbal feedback holds equal weight. Yes. Statement 3 .18. Over time, feedback should support pupils to monitor and regulate their own learning. Right. And finally, Statement 3 .

19 explicitly addresses the workload problem. It states that working with colleagues to identify efficient approaches to assessment is important because, quote, assessment can become onerous and have a disproportionate impact on workload. I just love that they put the word onerous in writing. It's a strong word. It is an acknowledgment at the highest level that if assessment is burning out your staff, it is actively disproportionate. Yeah. But here is my challenge to you. All of this is a high level policy conversation. I am the class teacher.

I still have 31 books sitting in front of me and it is still Sunday. Not a single thing we have just discussed tells me what to write in book 12 right now. The honest position is that nothing here tells a teacher what to write in a book. The evidence review tells us the robust studies haven't been done. Yeah. The guidance report focuses purely on principles and the framework statements are written for the head. This entire situation is a policy problem masquerading as a teacher problem. Exactly.

The only person who can change what you do on Sunday is the person who wrote the policy. The framework expects them to actively consider time efficient ways to provide feedback. If the policy demands three colors every week, that is a choice somebody made. And it is a choice they can unmake. OK, so let's unmake it. You are sitting in the policy writer's chair. What does mark less, mark better actually look like in practice? Let's walk through three different settings, starting with primary. Sure. In a primary setting, the policy shifts to whole class feedback.

Instead of writing 30 individual comments, the teacher reads the entire set of books. They note the three specific misconceptions that actually occurred. The next lesson opens live with those three misconceptions. Right. As for careless mistakes, they are simply marked incorrect and nothing more. That applies the first finding directly. But a secondary setting operates entirely differently. I mean, the volume of pupils is massive. You can't necessarily rely on just reading the room the same way. Right. So in secondary, a department chooses to mark two pieces a half term properly instead of marking six pieces lightly.

And crucially, a lesson slot is timetabled on the plan for pupils to read and respond to it. Because if it isn't on the plan. If it isn't on the plan, pupils are unlikely to benefit and the marking simply becomes the department's hobby. And what about a specialist setting? In a specialist setting, written marking may reach the pupil least well out of all three rooms. This is where the framework statement that feedback can be written or verbal does the real work. Feedback might be given right in the moment.

Using the pupil's own communication mode, whether that is spoken, sign, or symbol supported. Right. The written record of that feedback is created for the adults, not for the child. The evidence review focuses solely on written marking. It says absolutely nothing about a pupil who cannot read the comment. A policy should not pretend otherwise. Let's bring this all the way back to the kitchen table. Okay. It is Sunday evening, the same table. The same cup of tea. Yeah. How does the commute change under this new paradigm?

Well. The pile sitting in front of you is only 11 books, not 31. Why? Because the policy states two pieces properly, not six lightly. Yes. You are doing absolutely zero acknowledgement marking so that quarter of your Sunday is returned to you. Every time your pen hits the page, it does one of two things. It marks a careless mistake as wrong. Or it asks a specific question to guide the pupil through a misunderstanding. Exactly. And you know it isn't wasted time because on Tuesday's plan, there is a 10 -minute slot dedicated entirely to the class reading what you wrote and acting on it.

And we must address the remaining 20 books. They do not sit ignored. They get read. They are read rather than marked so that you know exactly what you need to teach when Tuesday arrives. That aligns with Framework Statement 3 .13. Assessment is critical to teaching because it gives teachers information about pupils' understanding and needs. So, it is the same job, but a completely different Sunday. Yeah. Let's turn this into actionable advice for you to take into school tomorrow. First, plant a seed in the staff room.

When you are waiting by the kettle at break time, turn to whoever is standing nearest and ask them, how much of last week's marking did a pupil actually act on? Right. Not just read, but act on. If their answer is, I don't know, then that is the most interesting answer you can get because it reveals a breakdown in finding number four. And the second action is the walk -in check. Look at your own school's feedback policy. The Department for Education's framework expects the head to ensure the policy acknowledges that written marking is only one form of feedback.

Does your policy contain that sentence? If it doesn't, that is not a massive overhaul. That is just a single paragraph to change. And while you are reading it, check if the policy explicitly requires acknowledgement marking. The evidence review states that acknowledgement marking is unlikely to enhance progress. Okay, so we've got four core takeaways for the drive. One, reform of marking policies was the top workload priority for 53 % of teachers in the workload challenge. Yep. Following that, the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group reported that written marking had become unnecessarily burdensome.

Two. The Education Endowment Foundation's review highlighted a striking disparity between the enormous amount of effort invested in marking books and the very small number of robust studies. Weak evidence about marking is not evidence that marking is weak. It simply means that a confident marking policy is confident about something nobody has established. Three. Five actual findings survive that review. Mark careless mistakes differently from misunderstandings. Awarding grades for every piece may crowd out the formative comments. Targets should be specific and actionable. Pupils are unlikely to benefit unless time is set aside to respond.

And acknowledgement marking is unlikely to help. Ultimately, mark less, mark better. End four. The newer guidance moves past the written versus verbal debate, focusing instead on three core principles. High quality initial teaching with careful formative assessment, appropriately timed feedback that moves learning forward, and a clear plan for how pupils will act on it. Exactly. The framework clearly expects the head to have written, written marking is only one form of feedback into the policy. If that sentence isn't there, adding it is the cheapest change available to you.

Every single document we have discussed, the evidence review, the guidance report, and the framework is linked in the show notes. They are completely free to open. Go and read them. We are just the trailer. trip in. See you at the gates.