1. Workload reduction toolkit
  2. Address workload issues
  3. Feedback and marking
  4. Try ideas to manage feedback and marking workload

Try ideas to manage feedback and marking workload

Case study

School details

School name: King Charles I School

Location: Worcestershire

Phase: Secondary

Number of pupils: 1000

Contact details: Email Deputy Headteacher Ruth Allen at rallen@kingcharles1.worcs.sch.uk

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Impact and outcomes

We made these changes to enable every teacher to become highly effective by:

  • ensuring every teacher has time to focus on what is important - planning, teaching and feedback
  • believing in simplicity, always taking the shortest route and aiming for maximum impact on student learning with minimal workload for staff
  • continuously reviewing and evaluating our systems in order to support all staff to achieve a healthy work life balance

Background from Ruth Allen, Deputy Headteacher

At King Charles I School we know that teaching is exhilarating and rewarding but recognise that it can also be exhausting. We understand that time is precious and that tired teachers do not make effective teachers. Our aim is for staff to not have to take work home.

10 ways that we manage feedback and marking workload

  1. Setting quizzing homework in Years 7 and 8 has substantially reduced planning and setting of tasks. It also requires zero marking, only checking.

  2. Homework tasks in Year 9 to 11 also include quizzing. Other tasks are based on key revision strategies, which can be self or peer marked in class and require minimal teacher marking.

  3. No setting of homework for Years 7, 8 and 9. Reading or revision is set for Years 10 and 11 in the final week before a holiday, to ensure staff do not return to a pile of marking.

  4. We use online packages for homework such as Hegarty Maths or Quizlet to further reduce planning, setting and marking.

  5. We have significantly reduced the number of data collections. There are only two data collections per year for all year groups and no written subject reports.

  6. Our management information system (MIS) pulls the data from departmental databases, meaning that data is only entered once.

  7. The whole school assessment calendar is created alongside middle leaders to ensure the best possible timings of exams and moderation and to avoid pinch points.

  8. We use tests and exams that clearly indicate what students do and don’t know and can and can’t do to inform future planning and help students progress. We don’t collect data just for the fun of it.

  9. We make sure tests and exams can be self or peer marked with minimal teaching marking.

  10. We do not have an onerous or impossible marking policy. Instead, we have a feedback policy that focuses on whole class feedback, verbal feedback and daily quizzes. No more hours spent marking hundreds of books ‘just because’.

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