Whole class feedback: a primary case study

Six years ago, we changed our marking policy here at St Matthew’s Catholic Primary. We moved away from the traditional approach of writing feedback in books and moved towards whole-class verbal marking and feedback. You can read about the changes made here: https://researchschool.org.uk/huntington/news/whole-class-feedback-a-primary-case-study

Since then, based on the evidence available, we have further strengthened and refined our policy, as we felt our new policy was potentially limiting and restricting towards pupils. Issues we discussed in relation to this included:

What is the purpose of the feedback pro forma and is the pro forma limiting the feedback being delivered?
Is the approach of whole-class feedback removing the individuality of a pupil?
Is the quantity of feedback being delivered too large?

We took each of the questions put to us and dived deeper. We soon began to understand that the pro forma did have the potential to restrict us. The titled boxes (spelling, presentation, strengths, focus for redraft) arguably narrowed our thinking and most staff agreed that they would often mark pieces of work focusing only on the specifics titled on the pro-forma: specifics that often focused on technicalities rather than composition.