Making Effective and Productive Use of Assessment

Marking takes up more of a teacher's time than anything except teaching itself, and a lot of it goes unread. A page covered in comments is easy for a pupil to skim past.

You'll learn to make marking meaningful, manageable and motivating, and use formative assessment in everyday lessons. A single multiple-choice hinge question shows who's ready to move on. Peer assessment gets taken seriously when the assessor is accountable for it, and a red and green card on each desk tells you who's lost. Small changes make feedback work harder, like putting a letter in the margin for each error so the pupil has to find it.

If you're about to teach your first GCSE or A level class, there's help with that too: specifications, mark schemes, past papers and examiners' reports.