It was the first few days of the academic year when the question arose. A teacher popped their head around my office door and casually asked: “Have you got a copy of the marking policy?”

Given that I am the headteacher, in retrospect, my response probably did not inspire the confidence it should have: “No, but if you find where it is, I’d love to have a look at it.”

It turns out that when you are new to a school as a head - with a new deputy head, literacy lead, key stage 1 team and no maths lead - tracking down marking policies is not your number one priority.

When we did locate a copy, there were two stand-out features. First, it was elegantly simple in its instructions: respond to the children’s work in their books. Second, it had that all-important consistency rule, which - as I’ve been told time and time again - is what Ofsted cares about: positive comments should be written in green and negative comments in purple.

There were three stages to my reaction. Horror at the choice of green and purple, which clearly clash. Rebellion at being told to use compulsory colours at all. And finally, discomfort. There was no way I would feel comfortable insisting that teachers spend hours marking using a process that none of us had any role in designing, and that did not provide a clear rationale for why it should be followed. Where was the evidence that this was effective?

It was clear that we needed to start again. Having an almost new cohort of teachers was a benefit, rather than a barrier. There was no “this is how things are done around here” culture to overcome. In addition, the team came with a multitude of experiences - including teaching internationally - that we could draw from. There was also a strong appetite to create a marking approach that would stick two fingers up to all the rigid policies that had been drilled into us in previous establishments over the years.

Unfortunately, it turned out that we just did not have the time to commit to this at first. For the sake of ease, and to have something on paper, we ended up with mismatched parts that were hastily assembled into a Frankenstein’s monster of a policy.

Clear structure

There the situation could have remained had we not experienced working as a group on an unrelated research learning community with Professor Chris Brown from the University of Portsmouth. The process involved identifying an issue, engaging with academic research, trialling interventions in context, and then measuring impact. This gave us a clear structure for approaching marking, too.

It became clear that before we could get anywhere close to detailing how we went about marking, we would need to consider, in depth, why we marked and therefore what constituted effective assessment and feedback.

We held focused staff meetings where research was presented, summarised and debated. Three resources were particularly accessible and succinct: the Education Endowment Foundation’s summary of effective feedback (bit.ly/EEF_feedback); Dylan Wiliam’s work on assessment and feedback; and the Eliminating Unnecessary Workload Around Marking report from the government’s Independent Teacher Workload Review Group (bit.ly/ElimWorkload).

Notes from these sessions led to the first written part of the policy, which contained the principles we had all agreed were most critical and our common stance on what feedback was most effective. We expanded on three words highlighted in the workload review, which recommended that marking should be “meaningful, manageable and motivating”.

* Meaningful - marking should be accessible to pupils in terms of the language used and it should cause them to think.

* Manageable - the feedback given to pupils should be concise enough not to overburden them. Critically, it should also be manageable so that the teacher has time to plan their next lesson (and perhaps even have a life outside school).

* Motivating - if and how feedback is accepted depends on relationships. This is true at all ages. Successful feedback increases effort and/or aspiration.

As we wanted to recognise the importance of feedback as a whole, we renamed the document a “feedback” policy, which encompassed marking as one strand.

Next, we moved on to tackling the practicalities of marking. Our approach would need to apply to children from the ages of 4-11. Finding a standardised method that would be relevant and decipherable to all children in that age bracket was not realistic and we wanted our policy to reflect this.

After sharing techniques from experience and from the research conducted, we trialled different styles of marking, including: using symbols instead of comments; pupils marking their own work; ticking off ready-made success criteria; marking only individual targets; “light” marking, where work was simply ticked; “heavy” marking with detailed feedback; and writing “action points” - short tasks that the pupil had to complete in the next lesson.

Teachers across all key stages found the use of consistent symbols effective. Pupils were taught the meaning of the symbols and it was quick for teachers to address common misconceptions.

In key stage 2, getting pupils to mark their own work was particularly successful. Giving instant, in-lesson feedback for procedural tasks in maths and literacy meant that teachers were able to pick up on common errors and adapt their lessons accordingly.

The action points had mixed reviews. When they drew attention to an area that teachers knew pupils would be able to correctly self-edit, they were useful. But too much time was spent making up and writing out individual questions, which then required teachers to check to see if they had been done correctly. This was dangerously close to “triple marking” territory.

Around this time, I started investigating “no marking” approaches in other schools, where teachers would make brief notes on performance in pupils’ books, rather than writing in each one. Acutely aware of the time that is taken up by marking and how this could be spent on planning instead, I was sold. Convinced that this was the answer, I insisted that all teachers would trial this approach for half a term. But the response surprised me. After six weeks, although some staff acknowledged that they no longer had the sinking feeling of being faced with a pile of 30 books at the end of the day, not marking had led to other issues.

Despite our explaining what we were trialling and why, a number of pupils expressed their unease at having nothing written in their book by their teacher. “But how do I know whether you have read it or not?” was a common response (who needs Ofsted to hold you to account when you have nine-year-olds).

Some pupils felt demotivated by this and commented that whole-class feedback given in the next lesson was not always relevant to where they were and what they needed to work on. Over time, I think the pupils would have become used to the new way of doing things, but it was interesting to hear their views.

Give the teachers what they want

Despite my eagerness for “no marking”, teachers insisted that they wanted the option to mark. This was particularly true for independent extended writing. These pieces are important evidence for attainment and progress across units of work. Not being allowed to mark was causing a hindrance in delivering feedback to pupils.

While teachers valued having the opportunity not to mark, sometimes they were itching to highlight things - such as errors in spelling, grammar or calculation - that could be easily corrected.

At other times, they wanted to give personal acknowledgement for successful work. For example, an effective use of phrasing, improvement in handwriting, or just old-fashioned effort.

However, there were some instances where they were adamant that marking was not an efficient use of time. For example, on shorter pieces of work where it was simple to assess if they were correct or not.

So where have we ended up? After all this experimenting and debating, we have come back to our principle that the type of feedback given should be the one that is most effective at that point. In essence, teachers have been given autonomy over this choice.

So instead of a blanket approach, we have a menu of strategies that teachers can use to “mark” work. We have developed a set of commonly used symbols we can employ instead of writing full comments, and these are consistent across the year groups.

Teachers can choose not to give written responses and we are designing a teacher “feedback book” that they can make notes in if they are not marking. We recognise that small things are significant when it comes to saving time, so we are currently trialling specially designed exercise books for our KS2 pupils. Each page has a tick box to indicate who has assessed the work (teacher, pupil or peer) and a tick box to indicate whether the learning objective has been met.

This approach does not mean teachers aren’t held to account. It’s just that, instead of looking at a book and making a judgement on the impact of marking from afar, leaders have conversations with teachers about what type of feedback was given and the impact this had on the pupils.

The process we have used for marking has also impacted on other areas of professional development. One effect is practical. Staff meetings used to begin with a diary update, but once we really got into using meetings for discussion, this necessity ended up eating into the time available. Now, we all gather together on a Friday morning to share breakfast while we look at next week’s plans and critically assess the quality and quantity of pastries on offer.

Other effects are about involving more staff in what were traditionally senior leadership tasks. Lesson observations (which are ungraded) have at least two members of staff attending. Staff can request the age group and curriculum area they would like to see. Follow-up discussions are structured on the rationale behind the planning, what the observers saw, the impact on the pupils, what should happen in the next lesson and what the observers might take away and apply to their own practice.

Engaging in action research alongside the teachers in our school has confirmed for me that I work with intelligent and articulate professionals whom I trust to make reflective and informed decisions. We know that, for now, we have a feedback policy that works for us, but we will continue to engage in debate and reflection about our approach.

Ruth Luzmore is head at St Mary Magdalene Academy in London