Frequent & Consistent Feedback
- Weekly essay practice at scale
- Trust-wide assessment data
The Goal
Sir Bernard Lovell Academy and Clevedon School, part of Futura Learning Partnership, wanted to build motivation and accountability in Year 11 English through more frequent essay practice. That meant closing the gap between writing and feedback, giving every essay the rigour of exam-standard marking, and removing the unconscious bias that comes with knowing a class well. Marking speed was the barrier. Across the Trust, English leads also wanted assessment data they could trust and compare – not just at Key Stage 4, but reaching down into Years 7 to 9.
648
Assignments Set
9,237
Essays Marked
1,510
Hours Saved
The Impact with Olex
- Weekly, exam-style essay practice in Year 11, once impossible with marking turnaround
- Marking fatigue removed, freeing teacher energy for re-teaching
- Illegible handwriting made readable, opening up feedback for more pupils
- Bias reduced in marking, giving a fairer, quality-assured process
- Clear progression tracking, with analytics showing how students are developing over time
- Students recognising their own next steps, with Olex feedback confirming what they spotted in their own work
- A trust-wide KS3 baseline, with every pupil in Years 7 to 9 assessed across all five secondary schools
- Data informing class groupings, showing whether mixed and set classes are balanced
Samantha on using Olex trust-wide
“It has enabled us to practise writing essays with a frequency that was previously unthinkable. Students can write a full, exam-style response every week, with feedback back the same day or the next. Teachers can see how it helps right now with marking and feedback, and how it'll get even more useful as we build up more data on their pupils over time."
Dr Liam Condon, Head of English, Sir Bernard Lovell Academy, Futura Learning Partnership
How They Did It
- Written work completed weekly by Year 11 students
- Uploaded in bulk through scanner with StackScan
- Teachers quality-assure every batch
- Feedback printed and given back to students the same or next day
- Work stuck into workbooks (but moving to binders next term to keep pace with printed feedback)
- Every KS3 pupil assessed at the start of the year to set a trust-wide baseline, with results reviewed by class, school and Trust
“Olex has been brilliant for giving us data we can use to recognise and support where students are, across the school and across the Trust. We're able to set the same assessment across the Trust, and because it removes some of that subjectivity, we get much more robust quality assurance on the data it produces.”
Samantha Jayne, English Network Lead, Clevedon School, Futura Learning Partnership
What’s Next?
- Regular KS3 checkpoints tracking progress across all five schools, turned round in days, not weeks
- Trust-level gap analysis showing where pupils are secure and where they are not
- Data informing a review of whether the KS3 curriculum is fit for purpose
- More formative use – fortnightly homework, interventions, revision and in-class “big writes”
- Both summative and formative approaches running side by side, with teacher comments layered in