exam-factories

Exam factories? The impact of accountability measures on children and young peoplecater for different subjects and different age groups of pupils in different ways, in order topromote learning effectively. These activities need to be useful for pupils and sustainablefor teachers. (Harford 2015)However, the head of a secondary school which had recently been judged ‘RI’ commented (I):HMI put out a paper saying that … all this obsession with pupils’ response to marking issomething that Ofsted do not require, but we’re all doing it because Ofsted seemed tomake it pretty clear when they came, if you weren’t doing it, you were falling short of whatthey expected to see.Some teachers argued that the policy of consistently putting next steps discouraged some children:Pressure on marking giving feedback to improve can be detrimental – this is a great bit ofwork because you did this, this and this but it would have been better if you did this aswell. Some children find it helpful, others find it crushing. (Primary, ‘Outstanding’ W)The pupil quoted in the previous section (see page 50) talking about Big Write targets seemed to sharethis view. While teachers all believed that it was important to give pupils feedback, they did not think itnecessarily all had to be in writing. Many Key Stage One teachers commented that it was pointlesswriting feedback to children who could not yet read fluently:The children are expected to respond to my comments despite the fact that they are inYear 1 and most cannot read and write independently. I have to read most comments tothe children and then scribe their responses. (KS1, ‘RI’, W)This activity was time-consuming, and could be a negative experience for the children, emphasisingwhat they could not yet do (read and write fluently).While pupils said that written feedback was helpful because you could re-read it, they also said feedbackdid not all need to be written:It’s easy enough to ignore like, written feedback. If they tell you what you need to do, itwill help you. You’ll take them more seriously because they’ve taken time out of their dayto make sure that message is loud and clear to you. (Year 11 pupil)Some pupils said they had some difficulty responding to teachers’ comments (other than spellingcorrections), and were not sure what they were supposed to write.5.5.6 Interventions, booster groups, and additional classesSection 3.4 showed that additional teaching is a common strategy. Interventions and groups of variouskinds are provided for those preparing for tests, those who are underachieving, or for Pupil Premiumpupils. Some pupils commented that they found after-school revision sessions very helpful in the timeleading up to GCSEs:Especially from my class there were loads of people after school, and that’s one of thesubjects I really struggled in but I think I did get a lot of help in maths because the teachers… pushed us to come back, revise after school, do this and do that. (Year 12 pupil)More concerns were expressed about the impact of interventions in school time, and the effects theyhad both in terms of narrowing the curriculum for certain pupils and in labelling them; these have beendiscussed earlier in the report. Some teachers reported that students could be resentful when they hadto miss other enjoyable activities:You do get students who do get resentful of missing out on certain lessons to go and doother activities where they have been falling below target, and something has been put inplace. So there is some resistance from that and some antagonistic response from someof the students because they don’t want to miss certain lessons. Particularly if it’s a lessonthey particularly enjoy and only get once or twice a week. (Special, I)­52