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Feedback students act on: redrafting and resubmission

The most carefully written comment does nothing if the student reads the mark, glances at the rest and puts the book away. Feedback that works is less about what you write and more about what the student does next, and when.

Updated 9 October 2026 · 6 min read

Why students ignore feedback

Ask a class what they did with their last set of written comments and the honest answer is usually "read the mark". That is not laziness. It is a reasonable response to how most feedback arrives:

• It comes late. By the time an essay comes back, the class has moved on and the student no longer remembers writing it.
• It is a verdict, not an instruction. "Good use of evidence, but analysis needs developing" describes the essay. It does not say what to do on the next one.
• There is no moment to use it. If the next lesson starts a new topic, the feedback has nowhere to go.
• The mark crowds it out. A number is easy to compare with a friend's. A paragraph of comment is not.

Each of these is a design problem, and each has a fix.

Make it quick

Feedback is most useful while the work is still fresh. A rough rule: if it cannot come back within a week, it should be shorter and lighter, because its value is falling every day. Better to return a short, specific target the next lesson than a full page of comments three weeks later.

Make it an action

Rewrite every target as something the student could do in the next ten minutes:

• "Analysis needs developing" → "Pick your strongest quotation and add two sentences on the effect of one word in it."
• "Structure your answer more clearly" → "Rewrite your first sentence so it answers the question directly."
• "More evidence needed" → "Add one date or statistic to support the claim in paragraph two."

An action can be checked. A label can only be agreed with.

Give it lesson time

The EEF's guidance on feedback makes the same point as a recommendation: plan for how pupils will receive and use feedback. Many schools build in dedicated response time, often called DIRT (dedicated improvement and reflection time), in the lesson after work comes back. The details matter less than the principle: students act on feedback in the room, with you there, before anything new starts.

Fifteen minutes is often enough. Students redraft one paragraph, in a different colour or as a new submission, so the improvement is visible. You circulate and talk to the students for whom a written target was never going to be enough.

Ask for a second draft

The strongest way to make feedback matter is to make it necessary. If students know they will resubmit, the feedback is no longer a verdict on finished work; it is instructions for the next version. The mark becomes provisional, which takes some of the sting out of a low one.

Resubmission works best when:

• The scope is limited. Redraft one section, not the whole essay, or the workload doubles for everyone.
• The change is visible. Show the before and after side by side, or the difference in mark. Students respond to seeing progress they made themselves.
• It is marked against the same scheme. Otherwise a higher mark might just mean a more generous reading.

Keep the mark in its place

The Education Endowment Foundation's review of written marking, A marked improvement?, notes evidence that grades can undermine the effect of written comments, because students attend to the number and stop there. You do not have to withhold marks, which students and parents often want, but you can change the order: ask students to read the feedback and complete the improvement task first, then show the mark.

How Paddle supports this

Paddle was built around the second draft. Marking a class set takes minutes rather than evenings, so work can go back the next lesson while students still remember it. Each criterion's feedback quotes the student's own words, so the target is anchored to something they can find in their own work. Students open their feedback from a private link without an account, and can resubmit an improved version. The new attempt is marked against the same scheme and the change is shown, so both of you can see what the redraft achieved. As always, you review and publish every mark yourself.

Common questions