Peer assessment has a mixed reputation in classrooms. Done badly, it produces vague praise, inflated marks and a lot of wasted time. Done well, it helps students understand the mark scheme and improves their own writing.

The difference lies in structure. Students need clear criteria, a specific task and a model of what good feedback looks like. Without those, they default to being nice.

An Inspector Calls is a good text for this work because students share a common knowledge of the play. They can check each other's evidence and spot when a claim does not fit what happens on stage.

The following approach keeps peer work focused and useful.

Give students a narrow job

Instead of asking for general feedback, assign a single focus. One round might be checking that each paragraph has a quotation and a comment on a specific word. Another might be finding the context and asking whether it is linked to the argument.

• Provide a checklist with three or four yes-or-no questions
• Ask the reviewer to underline the best sentence and the weakest
• Require one question the writer should answer in a redraft
• Model a good and a poor piece of peer feedback before starting
• Keep pairs consistent for a few weeks so trust develops

Build in self-assessment

Before handing in an essay, ask students to rate themselves against the rubric and predict a grade. The gap between their prediction and yours becomes a useful discussion point. Students who consistently overestimate benefit from seeing the criteria applied.

Self-assessment also builds habits that help in the exam, where students must judge whether their answer covers what the question asks.

Use exemplars

Give students a few anonymous essays at different levels and ask them to rank and justify. This trains their eye before they mark each other's work. It also makes the difference between bands concrete.

Discuss why one paragraph earns a higher mark than another. These conversations often do more to improve writing than any individual comment.

Combining peer work with teacher and tool feedback

Peer feedback works best alongside other sources. A student might receive peer comments on a draft, then a first-pass rubric response from a tool such as GraideMind, and finally teacher comments on the redraft. Each layer adds something different.

The goal is a student who can judge their own writing against the criteria, which is the skill that carries into the exam room.