Give children feedback to improve standards in school, says new guide

Reducing class sizes or setting homework contribute little to raise standards, research finds

Jeevan Vasagar, education editor

New guidance also advocates teaching approaches that encourage pupils to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Forget school uniforms and streaming by ability: schools will raise standards if they focus on giving children effective feedback.

So, methods win out. Who woulda guessed? 🙂

I had a professor at Indiana who swore up and down that class size was the only thing that has made a difference. I repeated that time after time, until I was cornered and asked, “Where is the evidence?” Then I found that there isn’t much. In fact, there is a lot that says there is no difference.

Now I know what should have been clear before. If anything makes a difference, methods do. It’s not how many students are in the class, but rather what you do with them in the class.

Now, these are differences based on test scores and we all know that test scores don’t mean much, right? You do know that, right? The fact is that the test scores they use are reliable, not necessarily valid.