Towards independence

The four Foundation schools are collaborating this year to investigate how to give the most effective feedback possible to our pupils. This encompasses the marking of pupils’ work, content of reports, and the advice dispensed in class for boys to act upon. For many years in education, teachers, parents and inspectors have concurred in believing that the more marking and the longer the written comments made by the teacher the better. When I first started teaching, I certainly believed that the quality of my work was reflected in the weight of the marking I produced, and felt a perverse pride in the number of exercise books I would load into my car each evening to take home. Recent research has debunked this myth, and focus is now on how pupils can be actively engaged in the feedback cycle, so that they understand how to improve the quality of what they are writing. So, what is our main weapon as we attempt to involve pupils more in analysing their learning? I hope you’ve seen it this term – the one thousand green pens that we have distributed to our boys!

When a boy is faced with copious comments in his teacher’s marking, he is relatively unlikely to read it carefully. As with many things in life, less is probably more when it comes to written feedback. He will gravitate typically towards the grade, which is one reason why teachers sometimes refuse to give one. The ultimate purpose of homework is not to deliver a score, but to help each individual boy to internalise how he can improve the way in which he expresses his knowledge and understanding. We know from research that passive learning (listening or reading feedback) is less effective than active forms of learning. Hence the green pen! We have asked all teachers to highlight boys’ mistakes, rather than correct them, and then to spend a couple of minutes at the start of lessons asking boys to make their own corrections as far as possible. There is nothing simpler in school than to ask your teacher for the answer. He or she has taught the same topic many times, and won’t have to think about it. However, boys benefit from being made to think for themselves. They will not access the top grades at GCSE or A Level through spoon-feeding, and it’s therefore vital that we encourage independent thinking from an early stage. Even if it would inevitably be quicker to tell our Year 7s and 8s the answers, we are considering their long-term needs!

My point is that we are plotting the path towards independence throughout the boys’ seven years of secondary education at LGS. This will never be linear. There will be painful moments as boys wonder why teachers won’t just tell them the answers. We are conditioned as human beings to look for immediate short-cuts. We get used, as parents, to giving immediate answers to our toddlers’ incessant questions. We gradually need to wean our children off their dependence on the various adults in their lives. We are having a particularly focus on correcting one’s own errors this academic year, but our pastoral structures have very much the same goal.

Having attended Mr Parton’s and Mrs Marlow’s Years 6 and 7 Parents’ Induction Evening on Wednesday, I reflected on the high level of structure that we provide for our youngest boys. This is absolutely necessary to prevent the culture-shock that might otherwise ensue as boys move from small primary schools to the much larger LGS environment. There is no question that boys are loving their Year 7 experience, but it would be counter-productive to provide the same level of structure as they gradually move through the school. All boys share a common academic and co-curriculum in their first year at LGS, but as they progress, decisions are required: academic decisions about which subjects to study; decisions to be made about how to pursue their leisure time; and decisions to be made about their behaviour. Our aim

is to slowly increase boys’ autonomy so that they arrive at their public examinations able to motivate and to organise themselves.

So please don’t think that your son’s teachers are neglecting their marking responsibilities in demanding that he corrects his own mistakes in green pen! Teachers have a finite amount of time available to them. It’s much better that they spend quality time planning lessons rather than merely adding paragraphs of red biro to the end of their pupils’ work.

As I was preparing my blog this week, I came across a Radio 4 programme that aired on Monday evening. “The reverse gender-gap” looks at why boys under-perform academically compared to girls. Once of the conclusions was that they can be reluctant to manage their own learning. We need to produce boys who are able to cope without spoon-feeding, and who have the powers of motivation to sustain themselves through university and beyond. Please have a listen before it disappears from iPlayer