HINCHINGBROOKE

SCHOOL

Policy Statement

on

MARKING

Drawn up by:                                                  SJE

Date:                                                              April 2005

Date adopted by Governing Body:                 5 May 2005

Revised:           

MARKING POLICY ~ KEY STAGES 3 & 4

For the purposes of this policy document, marking is defined as the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of a student’s work as opposed to the formal assessments against NC levels, GCSE grades or other externally validated courses. The outcomes of formal assessments are reported to the Head of Department whilst the individual teacher keeps relevant information from the marking process.

Please read this document in conjunction with the Assessment and Reporting Policy.

Objectives

We mark work to ensure that students:

• Receive praise for working well
• Understand what they are doing
• Know if they have made errors and how to correct them
• Have completed set tasks.

Good Practice

• It is good practice to write a comment or comments on all marked work. Comments must be constructive and tell students how they can improve their work. Many educationalists believe that marks distract students from reading and considering written comments and yet it is the comment that is vital if the student is to make progress. Written comments should reflect the purposes of the marking as set out above.
• For factual tests and some other pieces of work, a number may be given eg 7/10.  Otherwise, grades and levels must not be used for marking. The only time that grades and levels should be used is on assessed work.

Marking must be carried out at least once in each six hour teaching cycle.  Whilst it is not possible to put an exact time scale on this, it must be sufficiently regular to meet the purposes of marking.

Teachers must keep a record of comments/marks.

Literacy

All teachers have a responsibility to help students to become more literate and should, therefore, correct spelling or grammatical mistakes. It is equally important not to correct all errors if that will discourage the student. As a guide, no more than five spellings or grammatical errors should be corrected on any piece of work although this will depend on the age and ability of the student.

It is good practice for students to use a dictionary to check spellings, where possible.

Monitoring and Evaluation

The Head of Department or the member of staff with responsibility for a key stage is responsible for monitoring and evaluating the application of this policy within their subject area.

Key Stage Guidance teams will monitor and evaluate the policy across their key stage.

The above will report their findings to the relevant Line Manager.