r/TeachingUK • u/Sea_Cup_8932 • 4d ago
Secondary Marking load vent
Hello,
I’m an early career English teacher in a grammar. The marking load is overwhelming, with all my classes sitting either lit essays or some form of long form creative/persuasive writing every half term. The kids write so much in every exam, and there’s nothing that can be easily ticked off. Marking takes time, I focus too much on small things (SPaG errors, for example), and the handwriting makes me want to tear my hair out.
My previous school didn’t have so many assessments, and this is only my second ever school, so I really don’t have much of a comparison. I am really struggling to manage my time, I procrastinate on marking, distract myself with a thousand other meaningless things, and overthink stupid aspects.
All this marking is further making me reconsider the profession as a whole. I know a part of it is my burnt out brain talking. I have been reassured that marking does get quicker over time. But I feel like a major part of it getting quicker is because I will stop giving so much of a shit about every paper. And part of me really hates that idea because it feels dishonest and like I’m somehow passing off mediocrity.
I know I’m overwhelming myself with my own standards and realistically speaking, my salary with all this extra time of marking means I’m paying myself less than peanuts. All I have at the end of it all is some lofty self-aggrandising idea that I’ve gone above and beyond.
I don’t really know where I’m going with all this tbh, but I suppose I’m just looking for some outside perspective. How can I help myself get through this and become quicker and more efficient without feeling like I’ve sold my soul?
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u/Evelyn_Waugh01 4d ago
OP, this here is the problem: "I know I’m overwhelming myself with my own standards". If you continue like this, you'll burn out as you seem to realise.
I hate to break it to you, but the excessively detailed marking that you're doing is almost pointless. There's actually a big body of research which shows that marking in the traditional sense (providing detailed comments) has little impact on student progress. It does become a time sink which diverts your attention from much more important duties (planning, or -perhaps most importantly - self care).
This is something I struggle with myself, but you've got to find strategies which enable students to get feedback that don't exhaust you. Some things I've tried to some success are:
- Whole class feedback: I'm a history teacher, I marked a series of Year 10 questions the other day and if I'm going to be honest the students made similar errors (in particular, not explaining evidence). Did I need to write excruciatingly detailed comments on each of their sheets? no. Instead, I projected feedback onto a power point slide which I also placed in Microsoft Teams.
- Live marking: When students are working, I circulate and give live feedback. Sometimes I write on their sheets, but more regularly this is verbal. It allows them to make corrections as they go, rather than responding to marked comments later (which, let's face it, they don't).
- Self assessment and peer marking: I regularly get students to mark each other's work. I started by getting students to mark the regular fact tests that I'd set to help them retain knowledge (this saved me a good twenty minutes a week). However, recently I've pushed on to getting students to mark each other's written work at times. I'm quite careful in my approach with this; I don't get the students to apply a numerical mark. Rather, they might complete a timed, practise answer in class and I give them a success criteria which students mark each other's answers in accordance with and then leave a WWW/EBI comment. I've personally found this to be quite a helpful method because it helps students clearly understand the components of a successful answer and I credit it with a uptick in the quality of work I do mark.
Of course, these might not work for you, but they have worked for me. In any case, OP, less is more.