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The marking challenge


James Holmes CEO, Mark Mate


We all know that teaching can be one of the most rewarding jobs, with the ability to work closely with students to inspire them in their quest for knowledge, but a major issue teachers face is the dreaded workload.


Marking and feedback can have such a positive impact on learners and enables teachers to give them encouragement and the building blocks they need in the next lesson. However, it can take a huge amount of time to do this effectively. On average, UK teachers report spending up to 15 hours a week marking and assessing work, with most of this time being spent at home on an evening and at weekends.


One of the main reasons that leaving feedback in books takes so long is down to the time it takes to physically handwrite your ideas and suggestions on paper. This can often lead to teachers leaving low impact ‘tick and flick’ style comments that in turn have little to no impact on the learners. Marking can have such a dramatic impact on the progress of students if done well.


So how can technology help with the challenges of marking?


The Department for Education’s EdTech strategy launched in April this year, highlights key education challenges it wants technology to support. Reducing teachers’ marking workload was one of these, by using technology to cut the time teachers spend preparing and marking homework.


Mark Mate is an example of technology that can help in this area. It’s a revolutionary new approach to marking and uses technology to drastically reduce the time it takes to mark students’ work. In fact, you may have already heard of it, as it featured on BBC Dragons’ Den last year.


Developed in the classroom by myself, Mark Mate uses a combination of dictation and label printing which


Believe the hype! It works seamlessly, saves teacher’s time and above all helps the students with the personalised feedback you can give them. I’ve used it for every year group, mock exam feedback, general feedback, DIRT and some all–round positivity when work has been done well.


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