Secondary school feedback policy
Example
School details
School name: St Joseph’s RC High School
Location: Bolton
Phase: Secondary
Number of pupils: 840
Contact details: Email the school office at office@st-josephs.bolton.sch.uk
Impact and outcomes
This policy reduced the time teachers spent marking where it was not having an impact on pupil progress.
Marking for progress has encouraged some departments to amend their assessment schemes at key stage 3.
For pupils, it allowed misconceptions to be highlighted and gave them time to understand what they need to do to progress.
Background from Tony McCabe, Headteacher
We developed this policy because we found that teachers spent a lot of time marking, but not all of this was having an impact on pupil progress. We decided to focus on marking where the input from the teacher was proportionate to the impact on the progress.
We shared these time saving examples across the school and out of this ‘best practice’ grew our impact marking policy, which focuses solely on marking for progress.
Our feedback principles
All feedback:
- informs pupil progress
- has a positive impact on pupil outcomes
- is a good use of teachers’ time
The more immediate the feedback the greater the impact. All subject areas have identified a minimum standard in terms of regularity of feedback, taking into consideration lesson frequency and the nature of the subject.
When to give written and verbal feedback
Other than a tick for completion, a teacher should only write in books if:
- they are pointing out a good attribute that a pupil must continue to use
- they are pointing out a literacy error
- they are pointing out an area for development (this can be highlighted in the text)
- the work will conclude with a GCSE style mark (where appropriate) and a tangible next step to move learning on
Where verbal feedback is given, teachers should only record it if it will reinforce the implementation of the next step. It should not be provided for the benefit of ‘book looks’.
Quality assuring feedback and supporting staff
Heads of department (HOD) and senior leaders will quality assure marking and feedback and provide appropriate support.
Quality assurance will focus on how the pupil is progressing. It will not focus on the teacher’s writing, but rather the feedback’s impact on pupil progress. The actual practice of a pupil improving their work is more important than how much the teacher writes.
Based on these ‘book looks’ HOD/senior leader(s) will prioritise staff needing support and agree next steps. Staff who demonstrate good practice in feedback and marking will only require informal quality assurance in the future and will be asked to coach others.
Other opportunities to share good practice related to feedback will be built into the calendar, but each HOD will timetable these when it is appropriate for their department.
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