To ensure that all children have their work marked in such a way that it is likely to improve their learning, develop their self-confidence, raise self-esteem and provide opportunities for self-assessment.

As a result of this policy there will be greater consistency in the way that children’s work is marked across the National curriculum Key Stages.

• Marking of children’s work can have different roles and purposes at different times and can involve both written and verbal feedback.

• Whenever appropriate/possible, teachers should provide individual verbal feedback to children.

• The marking of children’s work, either written or verbal, should be regular and frequent.

• Teachers should look for strengths before identifying weaknesses when marking work.

• Marking should be linked to learning objectives/targets in some cases, even for the most able children.

• Teachers should look for opportunities to provide positive public feedback to children concerning work, which is a high achievement for particular children. E.g. POW

• Marking procedures and marking standards should be consistently applied across the key stage/school.

• The marking criteria should be displayed in each classroom and children should understand the meaning of the marks/marking they receive.

• Parents should have the school’s marking procedures explained clearly to them.

Marking practices and procedures should be in keeping with the school’s overall policy on assessment, Recording and Reporting Achievement and in keeping with a wide range of ways in which the school recognises and celebrates children’s achievements.

Scores should be used to inform teacher’s judgements concerning children’s progress and to inform teacher records and reports.

Guidelines

The following procedures for correcting children’s work should be implemented by all staff:

• Children’s work should be corrected as soon as possible after completion, and if possible, in the presence of the child.

• Work should be corrected according to the curriculum focus, i.e. in a piece of Science work, correct the Science, not the English content.

• When correcting a piece of work the procedures on the attached sheet, entitled Common Marking Policy should be implemented.

• If children make neat copies of their work after it has been corrected, originals may be kept to show to parents as an indication of child’s true progress.

• When marked work is return to children there should be some kind of verbal feedback either individually or as a class.

• Where appropriate a brief written comment, positive and constructive should be made on the work. This comment should also be information (ie not just good, excellent, etc) and linked to the learning objective.

Each individual curriculum manager will review in a sample of work from each class to monitor the implementation of this policy.

The desired outcomes for this policy are improvement in children’s learning and greater clarity amongst children and parents concerning children’s achievements and progress.

The performance indicators will be:

• an improvement in children’s attainment,

• teacher, child and parent testimony concerning the usefulness of the marking.

• consistency in teacher’s marking across the two key stages and between years.

• an awareness on the part of the pupils of what is expected of them

This policy will be reviewed annual. The date of the next annual review will be September 2001.

Common Marking Policy

The staff of this school have come together to determine a common marking policy in order that children will come to understand a whole school approach to the recognition of their efforts. Our school will use a common set of symbols to enable children to understand that throughout their time at this school the purpose of marking is:

• to recognise those areas of school work that are good and to improve upon them

• as a means of giving encouragement towards producing work at an acceptable level.

• to indicate to children what happens next - ensure progression

• to check for standards, individually, and within the class

• to determine whether a child can work within set time limits or targets.

The marking of work is part of the feedback that children received regarding the performance of their work in school. Marking is seen as a longer-term record of progress with immediate feedback coming from discussion with the teacher about work performance.

Marking needs to be a positive tool for encouragement - if negative comment is necessary it needs to be followed up with discussion between teacher and child.

Children need to know and understand the criteria within which marking will occur; with increasingly more complex demands, as children become older and more able.

Selective marking according to the criteria set will enable the child to develop confidence in developing selected aspects of their work at their own pace.

Corrections will be left to the professional judgement of the teacher who can best reflect the ability level of the child.

Children need to be aware of the marking policy of this school.

Symbols

Examples of good work in English will be highlighted in green.

Maths objectives will be self-assessed by children at the bottom of the page using a coloured dot.

. Green

. Orange

. Red

With particular reference to mathematics, it is preferable to box/underline the incorrect section and then the child can redo this section as corrections. Please try to discourage the erasing of incorrect answers as this leaves no record of mistakes that have been made and a possible pattern to these mistakes could then be missed.

? Teacher does not understand what is meant/what the child is trying to say

mistake

_______ under a word is for a spelling mistake

^ an omission

First School comments may be one word in written form in the child’s book, but elaborated verbally.

Teachers to aim to link comments to the original objective of the lesson.

Staff come together termly to discuss and mark children’s work in relation to National Curriculum levels. The assessed work is collected together and used for teachers to compare and standardise their judgements.

Children are given stickers and housepoints for work and behaviour, which shows improvement or effort. Comments on children’s work are positive whenever possible. See the behaviour policy for further information. Children may be asked to repeat work that is not good enough. This may be at playtime or at home.

Evidence of children’s achievement will be kept in the record of achievement (red folder). This shows the child’s best work or work of greatest significance along with teacher/child comments (see Assessment Policy).

End of year reports are sent to parents and a copy passed on to the next teacher along with the Assessment Summary sheet for the class.

Parents will be invited to discuss their child’s progress with his/her teacher by appointment in the autumn and spring term. At any time a parent or teacher is concerned an appointment can be made.

Each child’s record of achievement will be A4 size and kept in the classroom for easy access. At the end of each key stage i.e. year 2 and 6 the record of achievement will be evaluated and only 3 or 4 pieces of work retained which show the greatest achievement of the child in the core curriculum areas i.e. maths, science and English.

If a child moves school the record of achievement will be sent along with a set of Assessment summary sheets.

At the end of year 6 Assessment summary sheets for each child will be sent to the relevant school.

The identification and assessment of children with special educational needs is carried out both by the class teachers and the special needs co-ordinator and supported by outside agencies. It is the role of the school to ensure that the needs of the individual are accurately assessed and to see the appropriate measures to meet these needs are taken. This may require modifications to the curriculum where all other strategies for individual support have been unsuccessful. Detailed and updated records are kept of strategies adopted and progress made.

As a school we seek to constantly raise awareness of gender, race and disability issues.

We are aware in making assessments of the presence of bias and gender and race issues. We try to make assessments as fair as possible with minimal bias. Please refer to the Behaviour Policy for more information.

Your teacher will try to talk to you about your work when you have finished it, but if it is marked later these symbols will be used:

? = I don’t understand - it doesn’t make sense

T = You need to talk to your teacher

becaus_ = single error/mistake

bekaus = check whole word in word book or dictionary

billy = capital letter mistake

he was.// = Next new paragraph or new line
e.g. for speech

    the

in ^ car = you have left something out

P = punctuation (“” ! ? ., ‘ etc may be inserted)

incorrect; = look again

At first you will write in pencil, later your teacher will let you write in black or blue ink.

You may use a handwriting pen, roller-ball or fountain pen. You must make sure that you have these ready for your lessons.

You should also have a set of guide lines given to you at the beginning of each year. These should be stuck onto cardboard to make them last longer.

Each piece of work must start with a title at the top and a date in the corner. These should be underlined with a ruler.

An exercise book may need a margin ruling down the left-hand side. Work on A4 sheets should have a border marked on before starting work.

Each new piece of maths work should have the title and page number at the top, as well as the date.

Maths should always be done in pencil.

The question numbers must be circled.

To be displayed prominently in each classroom