Guides · Workload

How to mark a class set of essays faster, without lowering the standard

Thirty essays at eight minutes each is four hours, and that is before the second class. Most advice on marking faster amounts to marking less carefully. The methods below cut the time while keeping, or improving, what students get back.

Updated 9 October 2026 · 8 min read

Where the time actually goes

In the Department for Education's Working lives of teachers and leaders survey (wave 4, 2025), full-time teachers reported working 50.1 hours in a term-time week, and 38% of teachers and middle leaders said they spend too much time on marking. Essay subjects carry more of that than most.

Time a few scripts and the split is usually the same. Reading takes less than half of it. The rest goes on deciding the mark at a boundary, re-reading the scheme, and writing comments, often the same three comments in slightly different words on most of the scripts in the pile.

That tells you where to cut. Not the reading, which is where the judgement comes from, but the deliberating and the rewriting.

1. Decide what you are marking for before script one

A piece of extended writing contains dozens of things you could comment on. If the task was set to practise one skill, say, embedding evidence, mark for that skill and say so on the task sheet. Students get a sharper message, and you stop spending time on the paragraph structure you did not ask about.

The independent review group on teacher workload put it in three words in its 2016 report Eliminating unnecessary workload around marking: marking should be meaningful, manageable and motivating. It added that "the quantity of feedback should not be confused with the quality". A comment that does not change what the student does next fails the first test, however long it took to write.

The Education Endowment Foundation's review of the evidence on written marking, A marked improvement?, reached a similar conclusion: mark less, but mark better.

2. Read every script in the same order

Settle on a fixed routine and keep it: read the whole answer once without a pen, decide the level, then place it within the level, then write. Jumping between reading and writing is what makes the fifth script take twice as long as the first.

Keep the scheme open beside you, not in your head. Drift happens quietly: by script twenty, most people are marking against their memory of the scheme plus the last few scripts they read.

Sort first if the set is large

Skim the whole set and sort it into rough piles: clearly strong, clearly weak, everything else. Then mark each pile together. Comparing like with like is faster and fairer than meeting a strong script straight after a weak one and overrating it by contrast.

3. Stop writing the same comment thirty times

If most of the class made the same mistake, writing it on every script is the most expensive way to say it once. Two alternatives:

• Codes. Give each common issue a short code ("E1: evidence not explained") and write the code in the margin. Explain the codes once, to the whole class, with an example of how to fix each.
• Whole-class feedback. Note the common strengths and errors as you read, then deliver them in the next lesson with a task that makes students act on them. This replaces most individual comments rather than adding to them. There is a full guide here.

4. Make students do the work the comment asks for

The same EEF review found that students gain little from written comments unless class time is set aside for them to respond. A comment on its own is a cost with an uncertain return. A comment followed by fifteen minutes of lesson time in which the student redrafts the paragraph is where the learning happens. Building that time in also means you can write less: a short, specific target is enough when the student will act on it in the room with you.

5. Do not mark everything

Not every piece of writing needs a mark. Practice paragraphs, drafts and low-stakes homework can be checked, sampled or peer-reviewed against a model. Reserve full marking for the pieces where the mark tells you or the student something you need to know.

6. Let software take the first pass

AI marking tools can now read a script against a mark scheme and propose a mark and feedback in seconds. Used well, they change where your time goes: instead of producing thirty marks from scratch, you review thirty proposals, agreeing with most and correcting the ones that are wrong.

That only saves time if the review is fast, and it is only safe if the review actually happens. Look for:

• Your scheme, not theirs. A tool that marks against a generic rubric gives you a mark you then have to translate.
• Evidence you can check. Feedback that quotes the student's own words lets you confirm a judgement in seconds. Generic feedback has to be checked against the whole script.
• A signal for which marks to read twice. Some marks are borderline; a confidence indicator tells you where to spend your attention.
• You publish. Nothing should reach a student without a teacher reading it. That is also what the Department for Education expects; see is AI marking allowed?

What not to cut

Speed is worth having only if the standard holds. Three things are not worth trading away:

• Reading the whole answer before deciding the level. Skimming for keywords is how points-based marking creeps into an essay subject.
• Consistency across the set. A fast mark on script thirty that would have been two marks higher on script one is not a saving.
• Your judgement at the boundary. That is the part of marking that genuinely needs a teacher, and it is the part every other method here is designed to free up time for.

How Paddle fits

Paddle is built for the review step. You paste your own mark scheme and share one link; students submit without making an account. Each script comes back with a proposed mark, criterion-by-criterion feedback quoting the student's own words, and a confidence score. You read, change anything you disagree with, and publish. Because the whole set is marked to one standard in minutes, work can go back the next lesson, while students still remember writing it.

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