Feedback - Reviewing our Curriculum in the light of the Ofsted Research Review

 This is one of a series of posts on reviewing our curriculum in the light of the recent Ofsted Research Review in MFL. So far I have looked at Transition, Phonics, Vocabulary and Grammar. Our department's principal focus is on pupils learning to get better and better at using their language, with increasing independence, complexity and spontaneity. This principle is entirely missing from the Ofsted Review. Despite this discrepancy, however, the way we challenge pupils to use their language to express themselves, does mean that our curriculum seems well thought-out in terms of progression and challenge. So while the Ofsted Review doesn't share our aims, so far I think that we do meet many of their expectations in terms of the big picture of careful and sustained progression. There are details for us to tweak, but the majority are on our own terms, not just because we think Ofsted "wants" us to.

This post was going to be on Assessment as well as Feedback. I already know that Assessment is an area where the Ofsted  Review has pushed us to make changes. Our assessments in KS3 are due for an overhaul, and as soon as the Research Review came out, it gave me useful questions to think about. If you haven't read my earlier post on this, then perhaps it is a good place to start. And then this post will concentrate on Feedback and I will need a separate post on Assessment, as a chance to update you on the changes we are already starting to make.

Here's what I highlighted on Feedback from the Ofsted Research Review when I started our own KS3 curriculum review.

Feedback should be specific and focused so pupils can make a difference to one thing at a time. 

In speaking, the teacher can prompt pupils to try again or recast what they have said so the pupil can repeat what they are saying incorporating the correct version.

Feedback should help pupils understand clearly how to make progress and to feel successful.

From our department review

Our school policy on written Feedback was based around "Missions" where pupils were asked to respond to feedback by performing a task to correct, reflect or improve. I was always suspicious of this as it seemed designed to prove to an outside observer that pupils were engaging with feedback, rather than concentrating on what was best for the learner. 

And it ignored the primary recipient of feedback from marking: the teacher. It is the teacher who is best equipped to understand the implications of error or misconceptions or indeed excellence in pupils' work. It is the teacher who can decide how this is going to inform what to do next. Of course it is great to involve pupils in understanding their learning and to have a sense of their progress. But this isn't necessarily best done through doing corrections. The policy has now been relaxed and it is up to departments to decide how they handle feedback and "missions."

Example of a sticky label for marking criteria

As a department, our Feedback is much less focused on "errors" than it is on curating the quality of a piece of writing. We use sticky address labels with key criteria. These are used for work in pupils' books to give formative assessment before the final piece of work which will be assessed against the Key Performance Indicators.

The teacher can tick off the criteria and annotate the label with further comments as needed. From the example you can see that some of the key criteria are about making sure the pupil has included all the "ingredients" required by the task. Here, that means Opinions, Reasons, and reference to Past and Future. Then there are criteria focusing on the quality of the piece of writing: Organisation, Variety and Personal detail. This is part of our department's focus on pupils getting better and better at using their language, which is completely missing from the Ofsted Review.

KPIs for Y8

And there is room for comments on Accuracy. And these comments have to be understood very carefully as part of a wider conversation about progress. Because our assessment model is for all pupils to produce work of much the same standard. But with different levels of support. This is explicit in our Key Performance Indicators. On the Year 8 example, you can see the exemplar texts for each Unit. And underneath you can see the statements relating to support, scaffolding and independence at different levels.

What this means is that Accuracy has to be seen as part of this picture. And pupils have to understand that as they become more adventurous in expressing themselves, as they take more risks, as they move away from scaffolding, then they are going to make more errors.

The Feedback conversations are not going to be about correcting individual errors. They are going to be about the process of reducing dependence on support and moving towards greater independence in self-expression.

This isn't to say that marking isn't important, for the teacher to see exactly where pupils are up to with their internalisation and accurate use of language. But accurate language may well be typical of a pupil more reliant on scaffolding, and inaccurate language the result of a pupil starting to take more risks. We do use feedback to make pupils aware of their progress and to feel successful, but this is an ongoing conversation, not to do with error correction. I recommend you look at this earlier post on using Metaphors to understand the language-learning process if you want to read more on this.

And my next post will be on Assessment, where we are already making changes and the Ofsted Review has been a big factor in informing our thinking.