With the future of education uncertain and the landscape forever changing, it is vital that we continue to aim high and hold high aspirations for all our children. The emphasis on more able, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, is quite rightly a priority for us all. 

It is our purpose to create the very best education system, using research and pedagogical principles, which will improve the life chances of our children. This will enable them to cope with the demands of the higher level of knowledge, skills and understanding required of them. 

Seeking opportunities for deeper learning

The emphasis on preparing our children to achieve greater depth has been a major focus. After one year of “life without levels”, we now have an idea of how we can provide more opportunities and targets for those who can achieve this greater depth. We have focused on our more able in many ways, looking for opportunities within the curriculum to help them remain engaged and enthusiastic, whilst being able to demonstrate the depth of knowledge and skills they have acquired.

There has been a focus on greater-depth writing for all, maths mastery, and developing the reasoning skills of our more able, particularly girls who lack confidence in their own ability. We have not forgotten within this the more able across the curriculum, including PE and philosophy. 

Developing expertise across our teaching team

We appointed a more able leader to plan, deliver and monitor the thoughts and achievements of our more able children, working alongside our middle leaders and teachers to identify barriers and gaps and how we can overcome them together. 

This has fed into our CPD, which also involves our support staff, so that everyone is clear on the expectations we hold and how to support the children’s learning. We are also part of Aquinas Multi-Academy Trust; a network of more able leads in each academy works together to positively influence teaching and learning across the trust.

We have focused on the use of questioning and the techniques we use in philosophy for children to enable an enquiry-based and analytical approach to learning. Teachers plan their questions and the opportunities they provide in lessons for the children to ask questions.

Working towards the NACE Challenge Award, a framework to map out the best way to support our more able, has provided clarity and structure. Alongside research and best practice in other schools, we are able to plan and implement proven strategies, which will enhance the learning of all our children.

This blog post is based on an article first published in the summer 2017 edition of the NACE Insight newsletter. To view past editions of Insight, log in as a NACE member.

Ynysowen Community Primary School is a successful primary school in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. The school is a Digital Pioneer School for the Welsh government and is a self-improving school. Ynysowen achieved its second NACE Challenge Award accreditation in May 2017.

Tom Hills, deputy headteacher and additional learning needs coordinator, gives an overview of the substantial work the school has done in the area of marking and feedback.

For a long time now schools have known that the feedback students receive is a vital component in moving learning forward. Some, like John Hattie, go as far as to say that it is the single most powerful modification we can make with regards to improving achievement, while the Education Endowment Foundation cites an average gain of up to eight months progress.

Couple this with the fact that marking features at or near the top of every survey conducted into teacher workload, and there are potentially huge benefits to all involved – if we get it right. And if we get it right, then we can lift the lid and remove some of the traditional glass ceilings that are in place in education, particularly for MAT learners.

“Non-negotiables” for marking and feedback

Based on this, we took the decision to review our already established good practice at Ynysowen Community Primary School. This led to us forming the following requirements as the basis for all subsequent work in this area.

We insisted that marking and feedback must:

• Be highly valued by the pupils;
• Be informative in terms of next steps;
• Impact upon pupil progress;
• Be highly valued by the staff;
• Be manageable;
• Put the onus on learners taking ownership and responsibility for their improvement and progress.

In order to achieve this, we set out the following non-negotiables.

1. Every time a member of staff puts pen to paper to mark, learners will respond.
2. When marking a body of text, marking will signpost learners to errors to correct via a coded marking system. (Code placed in the margin on the line where the error occurred.)
3. When providing feedback by comment it will, where possible, contain an element of self-regulation, as this develops greater skills in self-evaluation or confidence to engage further on a task. Where this isn't appropriate, comments will focus on the process used in the task, or on the content of the completed work.
4. Dedicated Improvement and Response Time (DIRT) must be used at the start of every lesson.

Impact and ongoing developments

The new coded marking was implemented in conjunction with DIRT and immediately had the desired impact of increasing pupil engagement with marking, and substantially reducing teacher workload. Within two weeks, staff reported learners beginning to use the coded mark system without prompting to self-assess and improve their work – before their teacher could mark it.

Over time, training was given to staff with regards to moving from task- and product-related comments to process and self-regulation. Initial baseline book review showed 65% of comments across KS2 were task- and product-related, 30% were related to process and only 5% self-regulation. After training, this moved to a much more balanced 40%, 35% and 25% respectively. Work is ongoing to further improve this swing.

When asked about marking and feedback, learners respond very positively. They talk with confidence about the purpose of marking and articulate clearly how it helps them move on in their learning; they love DIRT time. All teachers report a huge reduction in marking time.

This project has been the catalyst for more evidence-based reviews of practice. We have undertaken substantial work with regards to questioning and are currently taking some tentative steps in beginning to explore the area of metacognition for our older learners. Marking and feedback will be reviewed next year to look at how best to incorporate the features available in Google for Education (previously Google Apps for Education) – something the school uses extensively.

Making use of Google for Education

Google for Education offers facilities, the likes of which have never been readily available to schools in such a user-friendly way. Learners can use the apps to share their work and allow comments, so peers can suggest changes and leave feedback. This, however, need not be limited to within the classroom or even school – opening up all sorts of possibilities for school-to-school working across the world.

Then there’s Google Forms, which provides a different dimension to peer- and self-assessment. Theoretically learners could create their own form asking for feedback on specific things in their work and invite responses from people across the world.

Google Classroom makes collating learners’ work easy and quick and allows teachers to make and/or grade work and send it back to the pupil who can make alterations and re-submit. With the huge range of extensions and apps available in the Google Marketplace, this feedback could now take the form of saved audio clips – something that will make feedback even more detailed and accurate, with no time cost.

For those who prefer to use a pen to mark, there are now apps that allow the use of a stylus to physically mark pupils’ digital work. This is then converted to a .pdf and stored alongside the original work.

Given that Google for Education is continually updating and adding new features, the feedback functionality stands to get better and better, which can only be a good thing!