Feedback Is Not Marking
If a student never reads or acts on your comments, you have marked but not given feedback. Before returning work, plan how students will engage with it. No engagement, no feedback.
Find this under Make feedback more useful
The strategy, as published
Exactly as it appears on the card
Part of What Feedback Is in 03 Feedback, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.
Why you might use it
The problem it may help with
Hours of marking can produce no feedback at all. If a pupil never reads or acts on your comments, you have marked the work but nothing has been fed back. No engagement, no feedback.
The distinction changes where the effort goes. Marking is finished when the pen goes down; feedback is finished when the pupil has done something because of it. So the engagement has to be planned before the work goes back, not hoped for afterwards.
What it might look like
One version of it, in a classroom
A history teacher returning essays plans the first ten minutes of the next lesson before writing a single comment: pupils will reread their feedback, rewrite one sentence in response, and be ready to say what their comment asked of them. The comments then get written knowing exactly how they will be used.
Try it
A way to begin
Before you mark your next set, decide what pupils will do with the comments and when. If you cannot find that time, mark less and protect it.
What to notice
Reading what happens
- Whether pupils read comments unprompted or wait to be told to.
- How many of your comments lead to a visible change in the work.
- How long the engagement takes compared with how long the marking took.
Things to think about
Before and while you use it
- Engagement needs lesson time, which means something else gives way. That trade-off is a planning decision, not an afterthought.
- A comment written for a pupil to act on reads differently from a comment written to show the work was marked. It helps to know which one you are writing.
Technology second
Where technology fits
Audio comments and digital ink can shorten the gap between work and response to almost nothing, and feedback that arrives while the work is still fresh has a far better chance of shaping what pupils do next. The tool does not change the rule, though: a recorded comment nobody listens to is still marking, not feedback. If you use the approved audio or annotation tool in your setting, plan the listening and the response with the same care as the recording.
The wider thinking
Where the evidence sits
This sits squarely in Wiliam's account of formative assessment, in which comments and evidence only count for anything once they change what the learner does next. The card’s attribution stands as published: Wiliam.
The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Feedback.
Keep exploring
Where next?
Back to this strategy in 03 Feedback, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.
Want to take this further?
Support is available
Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.