How can school leaders conduct work scrutiny without judging teachers, while still improving feedback?
Work scrutiny, often called book looks, book scrutiny or pupil work sampling, should help school leaders and observers understand learning, not judge individual teachers. Done badly, it becomes a compliance exercise. Done well, it helps teachers improve their feedback, develop their pedagogy, and encourage pupils to take action.
Understand learning, don’t judge
This guide offers a practical approach to work scrutiny, book looks and pupil work sampling for school leaders who want to improve teaching and learning without creating fear or unnecessary workload.
After an online session with a school exploring how to improve marking and feedback, one phrase keeps returning to me: Are we looking at books to understand learning, or to catch teachers out? Some inspectors, too, would do well to remember this!
That question should sit at the top of every work scrutiny template in every school.
For too long, “book looks” have been used as a proxy for teacher quality. Neat books? Good teacher. Lots of red pen? Hard-working teacher. Messy handwriting? Poor learning. No written response? Feedback has failed.
All nonsense.
A pupil’s book is not an appraisal document. It is one artefact in a much larger story.
The problem with work scrutiny and book looks
Looking at pupils’ books without context is like fishing without the bait.
You might catch something, but you probably won’t know what it means.
A blank page may suggest poor teaching, but it might also show that the pupil completed the work practically, orally, digitally, collaboratively, or through teacher-led questioning. Messy handwriting may indicate weak effort; equally, it may show a pupil with SEND wrestling with new knowledge. Meanwhile, a page full of teacher marking may show care, but it can also reveal unsustainable workload with little pupil action.
This is why work scrutiny must never become a performative hunt for compliance.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s feedback guidance is helpful here: schools should focus less on the method of feedback and more on the principles that make feedback effective. Feedback should move learning forward, not merely leave a trail for adults to inspect. I have also documented case study examples in my book, Guide To Feedback.
From compliance to action
My thinking on this stretches back to 2007, and by 2015, I was documenting the process publicly while working across a large secondary school. We had moved away from graded lesson observations and were trying to build a better “progress over time” methodology. The first templates (see this post) asked sensible but imperfect questions:
- Does the book show marking?
- Has the pupil responded?
- Is the school marking code being used?
- Is there evidence of peer or self-assessment?
Useful? Sometimes. However, is it reliable? Not always.
As a result, over time, I realised two things. First, consistency is often a myth. You will never get every subject, teacher, pupil and book looking the same. Nor should you. Drama is not history. PE is not mathematics. Art is not English. Practical and digital subjects should not manufacture written evidence for the convenience of monitoring.
Second, the most important question became much simpler:
Has the pupil taken action as a result of feedback?
That action may be written. It may be verbal. It may be practical. It may appear in the next task rather than underneath the teacher’s comment. ‘Taking action” is much harder to evaluate.
Work Scrutiny and Book Looks: A Reliable School Guide
A reliable work scrutiny process needs three stages.
1. Examine
First, select pupils in advance. Do not walk into a classroom and grab the books nearest the door. That is lazy sampling.
Choose pupils deliberately: high, middle and lower prior attainers; SEND; EAL; disadvantaged pupils; pupils with attendance concerns; pupils who may be coasting; pupils whose progress deserves closer professional curiosity.
Then look at work over time. If it is a one-off event, your evaluation is probably theatre. Ask yourself each time:
- What has changed?
- What has improved?
- What misconceptions keep returning?
- Where has feedback shaped the next piece of work?
2. Converse
Secondly, a pupil’s book cannot speak for itself. Talk to the teacher. Ask: What was the intent of this sequence? What feedback was given? What did pupils do next? What barriers affected this pupil? What would you reteach? What professional development would help?
Talk to the pupil. Ask: What were you learning here? What feedback did you receive? What did you change? What do you now understand that you did not understand before?
This is where work scrutiny becomes developmental rather than judgemental.
3. Interview and Improve
The purpose is not to produce a spreadsheet of “yes/no/not yet”. I did this so many times and failed in my duty as a teaching and learning leader. The purpose of work scrutiny is to improve teaching, not to repeatedly judge the teacher. Find patterns across the school:
- Where are pupils acting on feedback?
- Where is feedback being ignored?
- Where are teachers over-marking?
- Where do pupils need more time to practise?
- Where is assessment information not shaping the next lesson?
Then convert any findings into a professional learning plan.
A better approach; make it developmental
Most work scrutiny forms ask too much. Try this instead:
- Pupil:
- Subject:
- Teacher:
- Prior/context information:
- Focus pupil group:
- Curriculum sequence reviewed:
- What feedback was provided?
- What action did the pupil take?
- What evidence suggests learning moved forward?
- What should the teacher, department or school do next?
No grades. No teacher judgement. No performative compliance. No “gotcha!”
The leadership test
Finally, if a teacher feels anxious before a book look, leaders need to ask why. If the process increases workload, redesign it. If the findings do not improve pupil learning, stop doing it. If leaders cannot explain the difference between monitoring and professional development, the process is already broken. The best work scrutiny is not a surveillance tool – and this is where inspectors can get it wrong too! Work sampling should be a professional conversation about curriculum, feedback and pupil response.
If pupils do nothing with feedback, why are teachers spending hours producing it?
Work scrutiny should not ask, “Has the teacher marked?” It should ask, “What did the pupil do next?”
That is the question worth inspecting.
Related reading
- Reflections of Whole-School Marking
- How can you do what you ought, if you don’t know what you’ve got?
- Fishing Without The Bait
- Mark. Plan. Teach.
- Progress Over Time
- EEF: Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning
- Rosenshine: Principles of Instruction
- Ofsted: Education Inspection Framework
Work scrutiny: FAQs
What is work scrutiny?
Work scrutiny is the process of reviewing pupils’ work over time to understand curriculum implementation, feedback, assessment and pupil progress. It should not be used to judge individual teachers.
Are book looks the same as work scrutiny?
In most schools, yes. Book looks, book scrutiny, work sampling and pupil work sampling are different terms for reviewing pupils’ work. The process matters more than the label.
Should book looks be used to judge teachers?
No. Book looks should identify patterns across classrooms, subjects and pupil groups. They should be triangulated with pupil voice, teacher conversation, curriculum plans and assessment information.
What is the most important question during work scrutiny?
The most important question is: Has the pupil taken action as a result of feedback?
