Tracking progress means gaining a sound understanding of where learners are at and using this to measure change over time.

This is why we have mark books (physical or digital) in which to record our summative assessments of learners’ work.

The greatest benefit of this is that the quantification of learner performance lets us make swift comparative judgements.

We can see change over time in a denuded yet efficient form.

It doesn’t have the depth and richness of our qualitative understanding of how learners’ knowledge and understanding has changed, but it does offer a succinct, comparable set of reference points.

This transformation of learner performance into discrete pieces of data makes it easier for us to see patterns and identify trends.

Tracking progress is thus an essential feature of effective and efficient marking.

If we want to maximise our positive impact on learning, then we need to be in a position from which to accurately judge progression.

Collecting data lets us do this.

It acts as a counterpart to the qualitative judgements we make.

And it serves a different, but related purpose.

Formative feedback gives learners access to our expertise.

Summative judgements recorded in mark books let us swiftly identify progress and spot relationships and changes on which we might need to act.

You can take tracking progress further than the traditional approach of just recording marks in your mark book.

Here are five examples of techniques you can use to develop your marking along these lines.

Track Feedback Alongside Summative Data

This requires patience and additional time on your part.

When you give learners feedback, make a brief note in your mark book of what this is, either alongside any summative data you have recorded or in a separate column.

This is easier to achieve with a spreadsheet.

To simplify the process, you can develop a code for your feedback or just record the single most important point.

The benefit is that, over time, you can spot patterns and relationships between your feedback and learner performance.

For example, whether some learners are more adept at acting on your feedback than others.

Question-Level Analysis

This is where you record the marks for individual questions as well as the overall mark.

For example, a learner may complete a mock exam and achieve an overall mark of 80 out of 100.

Question-level analysis means you record both this mark and the marks achieved by the learner on each question.

You can then identify underperformance in specific areas.

One Year 6 teacher, for example, might use question-level analysis with their learners during mock exams and discover that most of the class are underperforming on a particular question type.

Armed with this information, they are can remedy the situation.

Redefine What Progress Means

You may decide that progress needs a broader definition than just improvement in test scores.

If so, you then have a different conceptual basis for recording information about learner performance.

For example, an art teacher might choose to redefine progress, so it takes account of the subjective elements of artistic judgement.

Having done this, they would then find themselves tracking different information about learner performance – information arising from their changed understanding of progress – than was previously the case.

This will have different implications for feedback, interventions and lesson planning.

Link Target Implementation to Summative Data

We have already stressed the importance of giving learners an opportunity to implement their targets.

You can embed the importance of this in your progress tracking by linking target implementation to summative data.

For example, you might have two rows of inputs for each learner.

The first is for summative data based on their most recent piece of work.

The second is a tick, cross or circle indicating whether they have met their target, not met their target, or made some progress towards their target.

Rapid Interventions

This is where we intervene as soon as we feel learners are falling behind their peers.

Instead of waiting to analyse learning over a longer period, we step in earlier to prevent problems growing.

In terms of progress tracking, this can mean making more summative judgements – perhaps with each of these being based on smaller pieces of work – to spot patterns sooner.

Or it can mean using summative data in your mark book as an additional piece of information that either supports or goes against the qualitative judgements you make in lessons, based on your observations of learning.