Marking and
Feedback Policy
April 2016
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Definition
Feedback is an oral and written process that informs pupils of their achievement in relation to agreed
aims and informs the next steps for teaching and learning.
Aims
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To provide a dialogue between adults and children;
To provide constructive feedback; offer encouragement; and promote confidence and self esteem;
To help children understand the important aspects and skills in their work and how well they are
doing in achieving them;
To help learners take the next steps in their learning;
To inform future teaching and learning.
Guidelines for giving feedback:
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Marking work and feedback that results from it should be undertaken as soon as possible after the
work has been completed
Feedback should focus on the learning which has taken place. With literacy and mathematics as the
drivers for foundation subjects, written feedback should be given in these areas; however
fundamental mistakes in other subjects must also be addressed if they arise e.g. misunderstanding
a science concept
Oral feedback can be directed at the whole class, groups and individuals. All well as spontaneous
oral feedback, planned opportunities should be incorporated into key points of the lesson (e.g. the
introduction, mini plenaries, plenary) to provide children with an ongoing dialogue of their progress
Marking should be done in a blue pen so that it can be distinguished from the child’s work, using
pink highlighter to indicate that a response is expected from the child
Comments should be clearly understood by children respective of their age / ability. They must
have clear purpose so that children can respond to them
Children must have time to read and act upon written comments. Children’s responses must be
written underneath the comment
All staff are expected to follow the marking policy; a copy of the written feedback page will be
made available for supply staff
Avoid comments like ‘check that this makes sense’, ‘next time, use capital letters for proper nouns’these are not comments to which children can respond to easily or immediately. Issues around
presentation should be tackled through oral feedback and recorded using VF.
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Written feedback
It is expected that all work is marked in an appropriate way. Whilst this would suggest that written
marking would be the most dominant, there are shades of depth within written marking. It should be clear
that over time, children are regularly challenged to correct and extend their learning further as a direct
result of feedback.
BH
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T
S
VF
Other
Acknowledged – some work, e.g. rough planning or note taking requires no more than an acknowledgement by the
teacher using initials. Appendix 1
Ticked - suitable for simple or repetitive tasks such as sentence work, maths calculations, spelling etc. Where a child
has a serious misunderstanding, this would need to be addressed by more in-depth marking. Appendix 2
Target – child has met a personal target. Appendix 3
With correctly differentiated work, it must be assumed that children are working independently. For the occasions
where a member of staff supports a group or individual in their work, the code S (completed with support) should be
used to indicate that learning has not been achieved wholly independently. A note regarding the nature of the
support may be used if the nature of the support is not apparent. Appendix 4
VF is used to indicate that verbal feedback has been given to a child about their work. Wherever the symbol is used,
it is expected that an aide memoire is written regarding the nature of the feedback. The symbol may be
legitimately be used:
 If children cannot understand written comments e.g. children at an early stage of learning. These can be
done during the lesson, where feedback is instantaneous; or after the lesson (although this takes greater
organization to manage so that feedback is effective) Appendix 5
 To record an instance of feedback given to a child during the lesson Appendix 6
Written feedback is the best way of moving children on in their leaning. It takes the form of written comments to
identify achievements and correct errors / provoke further improvements. The use of green and pink highlighting
may be used to exemplify written feedback .
 Identify achievements - comments may be general about achievement across the piece of work or identify
specific examples within the work e.g. a particularly good sentence or range of conjunctions used. Green
highlighting is useful in the latter case to identify which sentence or conjunctions you are pleased with; but
it is not needed for a general comment. Appendix 7
 Correct errors - Errors such as calculations and spellings should be corrected as a matter of course. No
highlighting is necessary for correcting these types of errors unless attention is needed to be drawn to a
particular learning point. For calculations or similar, use a simple comment e.g. Please correct numbers 4,6
and 7. Children must respond underneath the comment and their corrections ticked as a way of
acknowledging the child’s response. Spellings should be underlined within the body of the work with Sp
noted in the margin. A comment e.g. Find the correct spellings please (for able children) or Copy these
words three times: Special… may be used. Children must respond underneath the comment and their
corrections ticked as a way of acknowledging the child’s response. Which spellings are identified for
correction is at the teacher’s discretion e.g. high frequency words; topic words. Appendix 8
 Provoke further improvements – Written comments to provoke further improvements should fall into
three types: action, question and challenge. Comments should be short and specific, clearly explaining what
the child is to do. Pink highlighting may be used to exemplify areas within the text.
Action - a clear action to carry out e.g. Please rewrite the sentence (highlighted within the text) adding a
who clause; Appendix 9
Question – a question which provokes a response e.g. Can you make up a food chain of your own?
Appendix 10
Challenge – an action or question which extends learning e.g. Try using the same method for this decimal
addition. Appendix 11
 Models and examples may be used to check or correct a more serious misunderstanding e.g. modelling a
calculation; writing out a sentence showing speech marks. Appendix 12
 Using success criteria checklists – often these have a self / peer and teacher column to compare different
viewpoints. Additional marking may be used following the teacher’s assessment. Appendix 13
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Peer Feedback and Self-assessment
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Teachers should model the marking and feedback process at regular intervals. This is aimed at
enabling more effective peer and self-evaluation subsequently;
Pupils should self-evaluate where possible, identifying their own successes and looking for
improvement points. The plenary can focus on this process as a way of analysing the learning.
Pupils may be asked to mark their work in pairs, to encourage discussion about the work. Where
pupils have self-assessed or peer-assessed work, it should be marked as SA or PA.
Monitoring
Monitoring of marking will take place regularly throughout the year. It will be carried out through
interviews with pupils; scrutiny of work and classroom observation. It will focus on consistency across year
groups and progression through the school; how well it focuses on the intended learning; and how well
children are informed of their achievements and guided into what needs to be done to improve further.
Policy created: April 2016
Review date: June 2017
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