Drop the red ink, teachers told, and let pupils work out where they went wrong

A LEADING girls’ school has banned its teachers from making negative comments on pupils’ end-of-year exams, it has emerged.

Putney High School in south-west London had already stopped grading pieces of work for pupils aged 11 to 14 in order to stop girls becoming “fixated” on their mark.

Now the £19,000-a-year school has taken things one step further by axing comments in favour of symbols, allowing pupils to work out themselves where they have gone wrong.

Teachers have been banned from writing anything other than “a brief line of genuine praise” on papers submitted by Year 9 pupils.

Antony Barton, the head of English at the school, explained that following the successful policy to stop grading homework, they began to think about encouraging students to recognise their own mistakes.

Writing in the Times Education Supplement, he said evidence suggested that the best feedback for students encouraged them to take ownership of their learning.

Instead of comments, teachers put symbols alongside lines with errors in them, leaving the pupils to work out the precise nature of the mistake.

Mr Barton said students had been initially surprised, but quickly got used to it, adding: “With a subtle nudge in the right direction, the students began identifying error after error.”

Last year, the headmaster of a secondary school in Bristol banned his teachers from marking because it is “negative” and risks damaging children’s confidence.