Marking & Feedback
Marking and feedback are key to student progress by clarifying understanding, promoting reflection, and boosting motivation. They guide future learning by identifying gaps and encourage students to take ownership of their development. In short, effective feedback helps students improve and stay accountable for their learning.
The Purpose of Marking & Feedback
- To monitor, evaluate and review students’ current strengths and weaknesses, identifying their next steps for progress and develop strategies to improve outcomes.
- To ensure consistency of standards relating to student performance and progress.
- To give students developmental feedback on how well they have understood and applied the concepts, skills, and knowledge taught.
- To facilitate setting and agreeing challenging targets that reflect the individual abilities of students.
- To promote a positive self-image and resilience for learners, encouraging them to value and take pride in their work.
- To celebrate and reward students’ effort, achievement and progress.
- To enable learners to self-evaluate their work and take responsibility for setting their own targets.
- To provide evidence for assessment and reporting.
Bromfords Principles of Marking & Feedback
- At the heart of all marking & feedback is improving student progress
- Feedback should be meaningful, manageable & motivating
- Bromfords has a culture of feedback & improvement in the classroom. This is specific & timely, linked directly to clear success criteria and lesson intent
- When reviewing students books, the focus is on the quality of presentation & how pupils have improved their work using/following feedback. It does not focus on what the teacher writes.
Formal Feedback via Milestone Marking
All students will have a minimum of one piece of work formally assessed every half term, as per the department curriculum intent and implementation.
This is referred to as ‘milestone marking’ and could take a variety of different forms, including; formal classroom assessments; Progress Exams; a piece of extended writing; practical activity; project work / portfolio. This should be consistent across the subjects, however for subjects with tiered entries assessment may be adapted accordingly.
Milestone Marking & Feedback expectations:
- The mark scheme for formal assessments is applied consistently against agreed criterion.
- SPAG, literacy & numeracy errors marked accordingly, forming part of feed-forward tasks.
- KS3 progress shown using the language from the assessment & reporting policy; Exceeding; Secure; Approaching; Developing.
- KS4 progress shown by grade achieved, using assessment criteria (e.g. 6+, 6=, 6- etc or the vocational equivalent).
- KS5 progress shown by grade achieved, using assessment criteria (e.g. C+, C=, C- etc or the vocational equivalent).
- Extended & appropriate feed-forward tasks are provided for students to act on. Feed forward tasks must be accessible to all students.
- Teachers provide feed-forward activities in green pen. Students respond in red pen demonstrating improvements & progress made.
- Adequate time needs to be allotted within the curriculum for students to respond in a thorough and meaningful way. It is expected that teachers follow the principles of the Bromfords Teaching and Learning Toolkit when constructing feed-forward lessons, ensuring there are appropriate opportunities to ‘PRACTISE IT’ (I, we, you) with the skills needed for students to make progress.
- Non-Examined Assessment (NEA) milestone marking & feedback will be different in format and frequency. Adherence to the course specification / exam board guidance is given priority.
Live In-Class Feedback
Lessons at Bromfords follow the Teaching & Learning toolkit; Retrieve It; Introduce It; Practice It - I do, We Do, You Do; Review It
Opportunities for live in-class feedback are embedded into the Teaching & Learning toolkit, and is therefore delivered within this existing lesson structure. Live feedback is instant feedback that is provided for students to act upon within the lesson, facilitating immediate improvement of skills & knowledge.
Live feedback for students may take a variety of formats, including but not exhaustive of; verbal feedback from teacher; peer and self-assessment; whole class feedback; modelling & exemplars; use of rubrics etc
Live In-class feedback & book work expectations:
- The Bromfords T&L Toolkit is consistently applied to all lessons to facilitate live feedback. Staff must ensure lesson planning allows suitable activities & time for students to act on live feedback provided.
- Work is neat and well presented, including underlined title & date of lesson / topic.
- Any tasks printed out separately are stuck neatly into books / attached securely / in folders.
- There is no expectation for written feedback to be provided by teachers in student books. Written feedback is provided via milestone marking (section 4.3).
- It is expected to see evidence of students acting on live feedback in class books. Students must use red pen, whereby they are acting on in-class feedback.
- It is commonplace to see evidence throughout student books of red pen live feedback. Typically, teachers should look to provide more personalised verbal feedback to a range of students each lesson, for example, during the students’ ‘you do it’ task. It may often not be possible to provide more personalised verbal feedback to all students within a given lesson, but every effort must be made to provide this to all across a series of lessons.
