The year we stopped giving grades

In Finnish primary school we are allowed to report progress without numbers, and one year my colleague and I finally did it properly. No marks on anything for a full term. I expected the children to be relieved. Several of them were furious.

They were furious because a number is convenient. It closes the piece of work. Feedback does not close anything; it asks for another attempt. For the first month I heard "but is it good?" more often than any question about the subject.

A grade tells a child where they finished. Feedback tells them where to stand next.

What replaced the mark was a short written comment with exactly three parts: what the work does well, the one thing that would improve it most, and a next step small enough to start today. Three parts, no more. Longer feedback is read as a verdict and skimmed.

The work that made this sustainable was not writing comments. It was building simple criteria with the children first - what makes a good explanation, a good measurement, a good story - so that the feedback used words they had helped choose.

Parents adapted faster than I expected once they saw a folder of drafts rather than a list of sevens and eights. And I stopped being able to hide behind a number: if I could not name the next step, I had not understood the child's work well enough yet.