Marking policy

Secondary School

Rationale

We mark work for a number of reasons, including:

  • to establish whether or not children have achieved the learning objective[s] of the lesson [short term]
  • to give feedback to children as to their progress
  • to assess the progress of children in their understanding and development [long term]
  • to inform future planning by the teacher

The audience for all marking is foremost the teacher [including the next class teacher] and child. Marking should, at all times, be positive and constructive, so that it helps the child understand what to do to improve.

It is intended that marking should be a useful and productive exercise for both pupil and teacher.  However, marking will never replace the direct interaction between teacher and child that is the most valuable form of feedback – written comments will never replace the face to face dialogue of assessment and encouragement that occurs constantly in the classroom.

The work carried out by our students deserves consideration and thought in marking.  Written comments will be thoughtful and reflect a genuine consideration on the part of the teacher.   Marking takes time and it is better to take that time than mark poorly.  

 

Procedure

Teachers’ comments will be grammatically correct, tidily written, with correct spellings.

Comments will be supportive and encouraging.  While it is quite acceptable to point out failings, these must be in language that encourages children to do better and which gives them information on how to improve.

 

Marking should reflect the learning objective[s] of the lesson.  Any comments made, therefore, should relate to the stated objectives of the lesson.  This means that comments made about the work may not cover all of the errors in the piece of work but the marking will focus upon one or two aspects of the work. For example, miss-spellings may be ignored in a piece of free writing but the content of the writing will be commented upon.

Marking will be carried out by the teacher and cannot be delegated to a teacher assistant.

 

Members of the school management team will scrutinise samples of students’ marked work to monitor the quality of marking across the school.

 

SeniorSchoolMarking Guidelines

IBSBSenior Schooluses the following grades and symbols when marking students’ work. Departments are encouraged to use this standardised system as far as possible. This is in order to help students recognise common areas of success and areas for improvement across the subjects. 

When doing routine marking and not assessing using Percentages/ National Curriculum Levels/ Exam grades [see Assessment Policy], the following effort grades should be used:

 

Overall effort

a

excellent

b

good

c

satisfactory

d

unsatisfactory
 

The students’ work should be marked and annotated using the following symbols where appropriate:

 

Symbol

Meaning

v

learning objective achieved

vv

learning objective exceeded

x

learning objective not achieved

sp.

spelling mistake

^

word missed out

exp.

expression/ grammar incorrect

p.

punctuation missing/ error

?

meaning unclear

//

paragraph needed

x merits

number of merits awarded

target:

target to improve next time