---
name: peer-and-self-assessment
description: Read this when learners are going to assess work — their own or each other's — because unstructured peer feedback reliably degrades into praise and personal comment. Use it when asked about peer review, peer marking, self-assessment, reflection prompts, metacognition or student ownership, and when a teacher's feedback workload is the real constraint. It produces a scripted protocol with explicit criteria, a constrained response format, and allocated time to act on it.
---

# Peer and self-assessment

Wiliam's fourth and fifth key strategies. Together they answer the arithmetic
problem at the centre of formative assessment: one teacher cannot give thirty
learners timely feedback, but thirty learners can.

The deeper reason isn't workload. **Assessing someone else's work against criteria
is one of the most reliable ways to internalise the criteria** — the assessor
usually learns more than the assessed. So optimise the protocol for what it
teaches the *giver*.

## What done looks like

A script a teacher could run tomorrow: the exact steps, time per stage, the
sentence stems if the class needs them, what the receiver does with the result and
when, and how the teacher samples the quality of the feedback being given.

## Conditions — all four, or it fails

1. **Explicit criteria the learners already understand**, via exemplar work, not
   handout. If `success-criteria` hasn't been done, peer assessment will not work.
   Do that first.
2. **A protocol that constrains the response** — how many points, of what type, in
   what form. "Give each other feedback" produces nothing.
3. **Directed at the work, never the person.** A class norm, stated and enforced.
   The first unchallenged personal comment kills the protocol.
4. **The giver can't solve it for the receiver.** Peer feedback that supplies the
   answer is copying with extra steps.

Plus a sequencing rule that decides whether any of this works: **start on
anonymous work, not on each other's.** Two or three rounds on anonymised exemplars
first is the difference between a working protocol and "this is really good, maybe
check your spelling". Most classrooms attempt open peer review on day one, which
is why most peer assessment disappoints. `references/protocols.md` has the
six-step sequence for teaching it over a half-term.

## Self-assessment — the harder one

Unreliable exactly where it matters most: learners who lack the concept of the
goal can't judge their distance from it, and confidence correlates worst with
competence at the bottom. So **self-assessment needs exemplars or a prior piece,
not just criteria.** Anchored to nothing, it measures mood.

What works: self-check against a checklist before submitting (shifts quality
control to the only point where the learner can still act cheaply); plus/minus/
equals against your own previous piece (comparison to self, not peers, which keeps
it task-involving); the three-sentence gap statement; predict-the-mark, where the
*size and direction* of the error is itself the diagnosis.

What doesn't: "how do you think you did?", end-of-lesson smiley faces, and
self-assigned grades that feed reporting — that last one creates an incentive to
misreport and destroys the diagnostic value.

## Reflection prompts

Generic prompts get generic answers. Make them specific and answerable:

| Weak | Better |
|---|---|
| "What did you learn today?" | "What can you do now that you couldn't at the start?" |
| "How do you feel about this topic?" | "Which part would you struggle to explain to someone a year below?" |
| "What went well?" | "Which decision here are you least sure was right?" |
| "What will you do better next time?" | "Name the one step you skipped, and what you'll do instead." |

If reflections already exist in a connected Nurture server, read what learners
actually wrote before designing new prompts — the failure is usually the prompt,
not the learners.

## Guardrails

- **Never let peer assessment contribute to a grade.** It changes the incentive
  from helping to negotiating and puts learners in a position they shouldn't be in
  with each other.
- **Pairings are not neutral.** Don't pair a learner with whoever is most likely to
  embarrass them, and don't always pair strongest with weakest — that arrangement
  teaches one of them their job is to be helped.
- **Protect learners who are behind.** Rank-ordering, displayed peer ratings and
  "who got the most stars" convert a formative tool into a status contest.
- **Sensitive content.** Learners write about their own lives. Any protocol that
  circulates personal writing needs a no-questions-asked opt-out.
- **Watch for the confident-and-wrong assessor.** A fluent but mistaken peer does
  real damage. This is why the teacher samples the feedback given.

## Judgement calls

- **Is the prerequisite in place?** Criteria understood via exemplars. If not,
  that's the work — route to `success-criteria` and say why.
- **Which protocol?** Match to the situation, not to fashion.
  `references/protocols.md` has a selection table and full scripts — two stars and
  a wish, pre-flight checklist, focused review, error-spotting, observation
  schedule, C3B4ME, help board.
- **Does the receiver have time to act?** Peer feedback with no response time has
  the same problem as teacher feedback with no response time.

## References

- `references/protocols.md` — full scripts with timings and sentence stems, the
  self-assessment routines, and the half-term sequence for teaching a class to
  give feedback.