I teach both Year 12 and Year 13 Philosophy and I ensure that each group completes an essay every other week. Sometimes these essays are completed at home and sometimes they are completed under exam conditions in lesson. Either way, this generates a lot of essays to mark, which can be very time consuming. I like to make sure that I am both annotating the essay and completing a condensed feed back sheet. This helps pupils to identify individual areas within their essays where they have either done something well or something needs to be worked on, but also summarises the main points so that areas for improvement can be easily acted on.

I believe that including the mark scheme is extremely important in order to identify how well the pupil has performed in each assessment objective, and this allows pupils to target specific bands and be aware of what they need to do in order to move up to the next band.

Ways to make KS5 marking more effective:

Highlight where assessment objectives have been met in different colours

Use small stamps to indicate different marking criteria, e.g. examples used

Mark essays focusing on a certain focus and mark only that area

Include next steps in green pen when writing the next essay to ensure that pupils are acting of previous feedback

Peer assessment to give each other next steps, which are acted on and then marked by the teacher to ensure that the work handed in is of the best quality