Research School Network: The most important aspect of feedback, is the quality of the conversation Exploring a school’s approach to embedding high quality feedback. 

Hollingworth Academy is an 11 – 16 secondary school in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. The school is part of the Hollingworth Learning Trust. The Academy’s pupil premium cohort is around 28% which is in line with the national average for pupil premium.

On a lovely, sunny Tuesday afternoon, Rebekah and I visited Hollingworth to see one of the Research School’s evidence advocates, Josh Rogers, to talk through the implementation journey the school is currently undertaking with regards to developing approaches to feedback.


Culture to support evidence informed practice
Whilst we were there to specifically talk about feedback, what really struck us was the culture of high standards for all pupils. Things that may appear small things or could easily be taken for granted are explicit and a high priority. Things like uniform, movement around the building, punctuality to lessons. These things are not taken for granted but are intentional and there is a collective endeavor to ensure these standards are consistently in place. The school was calm and purposeful. Schools can have different reasons why they insist on these standards, or even which standards they choose to insist on but here, when we were looking at feedback, it made us reflect that all these things contribute to a student being ready to learn and therefore ready to receive feedback, which for me is part of Recommendation 1 of the EEF Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning Guidance Report: Lay the foundations for effective learning.


Josh Rogers is Head of English at Hollingworth and also one of our Evidence Advocates. Part of the role of an Evidence Advocate is to actively engage with research evidence and consider how to effectively implement evidence- informed approaches within local contexts. For Josh and his team, the priority has been on feedback within English but also working with other subject areas to guide evidence-informed practice across the Academy, in line with the school priorities.


Turning evidence into action
Many conversations about feedback start somewhere on the method pendulum; are we talking verbal feedback or written feedback? At Hollingworth, the focus isn’t really on the methods but on the quality of the conversations that support the method. Josh shared with us a typical scenario where a teacher might be circulating the room and providing immediate feedback. In some cases, this might start with a tick on the work which signals that specific feedback has been given. The pupils could then expect to be asked, ​‘so how are you going to improve that now?’ and this would lead to a pupil response. We loved this and felt like this was a really powerful way to demonstrate recommendation 5: Carefully consider how to use purposeful verbal feedback.


The department has also built in Target Time as a way of routinely supporting pupils to receive high quality feedback through whole class feedback and to facilitate the time for them to engage with the actions so that it leads to improved learning or improved learning behaviours. What really struck us about this approach was the way in which teachers provided worked examples to exemplify the identified targets. This helped the pupils.


Another really interesting approach was the English department’s policy for using multiple choice questions to test for knowledge prior to the longer responses where pupils would apply their knowledge. Talking to Josh about this approach, it became evident that this was another helpful way in which teachers were laying the foundations for feedback (recommendation 1). This not only meant that teachers could assess the extent to which the relevant knowledge had been learned but also meant that this process, which included the opportunity to self assess against the correct answers, developed pupils’ confidence in the subject matter, developing their motivation and self-confidence-as referenced in recommendation 2.


What’s next?
Whilst there is evidence of really good practice here, Josh and his team are still having thoughtful and reflective conversations about developing the approach even further. Josh is also considering how to identify some core components that could be transferred to other subject areas across the Academy.

For example, the team are debating the value of more generic targets for improvement which can be applied across multiple longer responses, therefore developing learning behaviours with the value of more knowledge rich targets that help develop the pupil’s knowledge of task.

Discussions are also ongoing with regards to the challenge of supporting pupils to retain the understanding of their individual targets over longer periods of time so that this learning is embedded.

It’s always brilliant to have the opportunity to see the fantastic work that takes place in schools and to be part of the rich conversations that delve into the research evidence and consider the implementation of recommendations through a deep understanding of context.



Thank you to Josh Rogers and the wider teams at Hollingworth Academy.