There is a quiet crisis happening in staffrooms around the world. Teachers are spending their evenings, weekends, and school holidays buried in marking - and it is pushing good people out of the profession. Workload surveys consistently rank marking as the single biggest contributor to unsustainable working hours. In many schools, the expectation is not just that work gets marked, but that every piece receives detailed written feedback, often in multiple colours of pen, often according to policies designed more for inspectors than for students.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: most of that marking does not improve student outcomes. The Education Endowment Foundation’s research on written feedback found that lengthy written comments are one of the least efficient ways to move learning forward, particularly when students glance at the grade and skip the feedback entirely.
So how do you give better feedback in less time? Here are five strategies that actually work.
1. “Markless” Feedback
Drop the idea that feedback must be written in a book. Some of the most powerful feedback happens live, in the room, while students are still working.
How it works: Circulate during independent work time and give verbal feedback to students as you go. Use a simple coding system in books - a dot, a tick, or a short code like “EV” for “needs more evaluation” - so there is a record that feedback was given. Students act on the feedback immediately, while the learning is fresh, rather than three days later when they have moved on to a new topic.
Why it is better: Verbal feedback is immediate, two-way, and adaptive. You can check understanding in real time and adjust your guidance on the spot. Written comments cannot do that.
2. Selective Deep Marking
Not every piece of work needs the same level of scrutiny. Choose strategically.
How it works: For a class of 30, deeply mark five or six pieces that represent a cross-section of your students - a couple of high attainers, a couple in the middle, and a couple who are struggling. Use those to diagnose common issues, then provide whole-class feedback (see Strategy 5) for everyone else. For the remaining students, a quick check for completion and effort is sufficient.
Why it is better: You get the diagnostic information you need without marking 30 near-identical responses. Your deep marking is actually deep because you are not exhausted by the time you reach the twentieth book.
3. Peer Assessment with Clear Rubrics
When done properly, peer assessment is not a shortcut - it is pedagogy. Students learn as much from evaluating work as they do from producing it.
How it works: Give students a clear, specific rubric or set of success criteria before they begin the peer assessment. Model what good feedback looks like by marking one example together as a class. Then have students assess a partner’s work against the criteria. The teacher’s role shifts from marker to quality controller - circulating, checking that feedback is accurate and useful, and intervening where it is not.
Why it is better: Students develop evaluative judgement, which is a skill they need for self-regulation and exam success. Research by Sadler (1989) and more recently by Boud and Molloy (2013) highlights that the ability to judge quality against criteria is fundamental to learning. You are not outsourcing your job - you are teaching a higher-order skill.
4. AI-Assisted Marking Tools
Let technology handle the repetitive, criteria-referenced marking so you can focus on the nuanced, human feedback that only a teacher can provide.
How it works: Use a tool like StudyPulse to assign structured practice questions that are automatically marked against the relevant curriculum mark scheme. The AI provides instant, specific feedback to students - what they got right, what they missed, and why. Teachers review the analytics dashboard to identify patterns: which students need support, which topics need reteaching, and where the class is strong.
Why it is better: Students get feedback in seconds rather than days. Teachers get diagnostic data without spending hours generating it. The teacher’s time is redirected from marking routine questions to planning responsive lessons and having meaningful one-to-one conversations with students who need them most.
5. Whole-Class Feedback
If you are writing the same comment on fifteen different pieces of work, stop writing it fifteen times.
How it works: After reviewing a set of work (which can be done quickly with a simple checklist rather than full written marking), note the common strengths, common errors, and one or two excellent examples. Present this to the class on a single feedback sheet or slide at the start of the next lesson. Students then spend five minutes applying the feedback to improve their own work.
Why it is better: Every student benefits from the feedback, not just the ones whose books you happened to mark in detail. It takes 15 minutes to prepare instead of three hours to write individually. And because students act on the feedback immediately in class, there is a much higher chance it actually leads to improvement.
The Goal Is Better Feedback, Not Less
None of these strategies are about cutting corners. They are about recognising that the traditional model of marking - the teacher takes the books home, writes pages of comments, hands them back days later, and hopes the students read them - is neither effective nor sustainable.
The goal is to give students feedback that is timely (while they can still act on it), specific (tied to clear criteria), and actionable (tells them what to do next). That kind of feedback does not require a teacher to spend every Sunday afternoon with a red pen. It requires smart systems, clear routines, and a willingness to let go of practices that look thorough but do not actually help students learn.
Your time is finite. Spend it where it matters most.