As a teacher who has never been particularly fond of marking, I have always found the idea of a document stating exactly what, when and how I should mark pretty annoying. However, in recent years it feels as if schools have taken leave of their senses in developing lengthy and diabolically patronising marking policies that evoke totalitarian manifestos.
Depending on what prevailing wind exists within the education establishment, teachers could be directed to follow a series of contradictory and complex steps in attempting to do the once simple job of marking a pupil’s work. Comments should be given, but nothing personal included. Marks, grades or an imaginative scoring system should be used, but not so a pupil knows how well they have done. Some schools have timesaving lists of coded abbreviations teachers are to include in books, the irony being the amount of time it takes all participants to decipher them.
Red or green pen?
In having their work marked, pupils can be asked to respond to it, which at some point in the future the teacher needs to respond further to, then the pupil, ad infinitum. This classroom version of ‘No, you hang up’ continues for some time until the exercise book has been filled or one of them realises that the school year is nearly over and most of the syllabus is not remotely finished because they were engaged in this idiotic cycle of producing ‘evidence’ should an Ofsted inspector look at an exercise book in the thirty seconds they now spend in a lesson.
However, this pantomime is eclipsed by the ongoing war between red and green pens. Never before have there been such inane discussions over the virtues of one over the other. Should teachers use red, pupils green? The other way round? Attempting to anticipate the next revolution in marking, I now mark in yellow, the pale love-child of both colours. While it is a shame that the pupils cannot read my feedback, I take solace in being ahead of the curve in this matter. Bring on the next version of the manifesto.
The writer is a teacher from the South of England
