St. Cuthbert’s R.C. Primary School
MARKING POLICY STATEMENT
Introduction
This document outlines the purpose, nature and management of marking at St. Cuthbert’s School.
Rationale
In order to ensure continuity and progression a standard format is needed in both recording and marking.
We consider marking children's work is an important part of teacher assessment.
Aims
* support consistency in marking and expected standards of presentation,
* provide clear feedback to the children about strengths and weaknesses in their work;
* promote teacher child interaction;
* recognise, encourage and reward children's effort and progress;
* enhance future performance;
* focus teachers on those areas of learning where groups and individual children need specific help;
* provide a record of children's progress;
* help parents understand strengths and weaknesses in their children's work.
As in every facet of school life we hope to increase the self-esteem of all the children and help them grow
in confidence by adopting the following procedures.
Marking
These guidelines are intended to support consistency in marking and expected standards of
presentation.
Staff should build time into lessons for children to reflect on marking and respond to it.

Ideally the child should be present when the work is being marked to ensure teacher child
interaction.

Teachers mark in red pen and Teaching Assistants mark in black pen.

Teachers should be sensitive to the quantity and purpose of errors they mark.

Work will be marked for different aspects on different occasions.

The staff have worked on ‘Quality Marking’, whereby work is marked according to Objectives
/ targets set for the class or individuals. This marking relates directly to these objectives /
targets and asks the children to reflect further upon their work in the light of the teacher’s
comments. The children may be allocated time at the next opportunity to do further work
relating to these comments.
St. Cuthbert’s R.C. Primary School, New Seaham - Marking Policy 2014
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
The teacher may also set new targets for the child(ren) to consider for their next piece of
work.
Achievement and effort will be celebrated through rewards, display, stickers /symbols, written comments,
certificates or verbal praise in class or assembly.
Quality marking
* comments are to form the basis of a discussion between the teacher and the child;
* comments are to inform future work; and or
* comments are to correct or improve an existing piece of work.
“To be effective, feedback should cause thinking to take place.” Shirley Clarke
Comments
Comments on children's work should:
* relate to planned learning objectives / targets;
* be legible and clear in meaning;
* recognise children's achievements; and indicate the next steps in children's learning.
In general, marking should

focus on target area and learning objective.

indicate incorrect answers.
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avoid pages of crosses as this tends to demoralize children.

not be altered or erased by the children unless directed by the teacher.
Conclusion
It is expected that the consistent and progressive implementation of this policy will both improve the
quality of the children’s work and enable staff to plan future work more effectively.
English
Marking Spelling, punctuation and grammar
Spelling, punctuation and grammar will be corrected according to the learning objectives or targets.
Marking and Feedback in Writing – Rationale
The school policy for the marking of written work has been devised
a)
to enable children to learn more effectively;
b)
to make the teaching process more efficient.
To achieve this:
*
Children will be encouraged to talk about their writing
a)
among themselves;
St. Cuthbert’s R.C. Primary School, New Seaham - Marking Policy 2014
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b)
with a teacher or other adult.
*Children will learn to regard mistakes made in writing as learning opportunities to help them reflect on
the writing process.
*Children, both individually and in groups, will be given chances to develop their written work in all
subjects, not just English. They will be encouraged to reflect on, mark, edit and rewrite work they have
produced.
* ‘S’ (supported) or ‘G’ (guided), indicate the level of support that has been given.
* Teachers/Teaching Assistants may use ‘I’ to show children have worked independently.
* ‘VF’ indicates that verbal feedback has been given or there has been a dialogue between teacher and
child about the piece of work.
* Children in Years 1,2 and 3 use a smiley face traffic system as a means of self assessment.
* Children in Years 4 (apart from least able), 5 and 6 write an evaluation of their learning.
* Teachers mark English work giving one good point (1 star), one edit (1 wish – can be spelling correction)
and one improvement point.
*Teachers/Teaching Assistants in KS1 might draw a symbol to signify capital letter, full stop, connective or
wow word (see sheets displayed in class and stickers in the front of children’ books).
*All writing tasks produced by the children will be quality marked by the teacher using the star and wish
system mentioned above.
Big Write: This is completed weekly. Every child will have their work quality marked. The teacher will firstly
respond to success against the Learning Objective, give children a target and an edit. Teachers and
Teaching assistants support writing during the lesson in turquoise and mark the work in red.
Staff will use the following symbols when marking written work.
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Mathematics
Rationale
In order to ensure continuity and progression a standard format is needed in both marking and recording.
As in every facet of school life we hope to increase the self-esteem of all children and help them grow in
confidence.
To achieve this we use the following procedures:

When marking children’s work we are not simply looking for correct answers, but also methods for
working out calculations.

The teacher needs to have regard for methods of working, processes and by looking for evidence of
logical thinking processes and listening to, or reading, the child’s explanation.

Ideally the child should be present when work is being marked to ensure teacher / child interaction.

If this is not possible, then the marking should be of a nature that helps the child to understand
what is wrong with their work.

These guidelines are intended to help teachers and children but we are aware that there is still a
need for flexibility, both for the individual teachers and children within different contexts.

Time should be built into lessons for children to reflect on marking and respond to it.

Incorrect calculations / answers should be repeated in the exercise book and corrected with a C.

Children self correct their work by putting a small cross next to the error.
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Children in KS2 correct their work in green pen.
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* ‘S’ (supported) or ‘G’ (guided), indicate the level of support that has been given.

* Teachers/Teaching Assistants may use ‘I’ to show children have worked independently.

* ‘VF’ indicates that verbal feedback has been given or there has been a dialogue between teacher
and child about the piece of work.

* Children in Years 1,2 and 3 use a smiley face traffic system as a means of self assessment.

* Children in Years 4 (apart from least able), 5 and 6 write an evaluation of their learning.
Good written feedback
• uses positive specific praise
• is clearly linked to objective/success criteria
• key points for improvement are identified
• gives improvements prompts
• allows time to make improvements
St. Cuthbert’s R.C. Primary School, New Seaham - Marking Policy 2014
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