Sadler's Three Conditions

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

Before feedback can do anything, three conditions have to hold. Sadler's argument, which anchors much of this strand, is that pupils must know what quality looks like, be able to compare their own work against it, and have the chance to close the gap they find.

Miss any one and the rest stalls. Criteria shared after the work is finished cannot guide it; a comparison pupils cannot make wastes the criteria; a gap identified with no time to close it just sits there.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

Before a design and technology project begins, the class examines the criteria alongside two finished products of different quality and discusses which criteria separate them. Halfway through making, pupils stop and place their own work against the same criteria before deciding what to do next.

Try it

A way to begin

Check one upcoming task against the three conditions: criteria shared first, a built-in moment to compare, time to act on what the comparison shows. Add whichever is missing before changing anything else.

What to notice

Reading what happens

• Whether pupils' judgements of their own work start to resemble yours, which is the comparison condition beginning to function.
• Which of the three conditions your current routine handles least well.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

• Criteria pupils have never seen exemplified tend to stay abstract. Showing what quality looks like in real work can do more than a list of statements alone.
• The three conditions are a design test as much as a marking one: they can be checked before a task is set, not just afterwards.

Related strategies

Where this connects

• 🔬 Self-Assessment as Process Ask students to assess their work against criteria before you mark it. Andrade found the act of comparing, not the accuracy of the judgment, improves performance. Process is the point. 03 Feedback · Source & Direction
• 🌱 Build Feedback Literacy Teach students how to read and act on feedback before you give it. Model with an exemplar: here is the comment, what it means, what to do next. Feedback literacy is taught, not assumed. 03 Feedback · Feedback & the Learner
• ⏱️ Build In Time to Act Feedback with no time to act on it is wasted. Begin the next lesson with students reading and responding to comments before anything new. The response is the learning event. 03 Feedback · Closing the Gap
• 📄 Exemplars Before Rubrics Show work at different standards before students start their own. Students spot quality in someone else's work more readily than in their own. A rubric tells students what quality is; an exemplar shows them. 02 Formative Assessment · Clarify Learning Intentions
• 🤝 Build Success Criteria Together Ask students what excellent looks like before they begin. Their language, not yours, becomes the standard. Criteria they articulate themselves land far more deeply than criteria handed to them. 02 Formative Assessment · Clarify Learning Intentions

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Sadler's conditions are the hinge of this strand, and Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick built directly on them, placing feedback within pupils' growing ability to judge and improve their own work. The card’s attribution stands as published: Sadler.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Feedback.