Every summer, moderation gives us something a spreadsheet cannot: a close-up view of why some children reach the expected standard and greater depth with room to spare, while others fall just short despite a year of hard work. It also lets us hear something a data drop never will: the sheer enjoyment in a piece of writing, often audible the moment it is read aloud. Across the statutory and non-statutory moderation we delivered across the country last year, the same patterns surfaced again and again.
This is not a list of things to fear, but a practical guide: for each pattern that held children back, here is what our most successful schools did instead, and what you might try if it sounds familiar.
Transcription is especially demanding for developing writers, making heavy demands on working memory, and only once handwriting and spelling become fluent can children give their attention to other aspects of writing. The Writing Framework makes the same case through the Simple View of Writing: composition and transcription are distinct strands, and fluency in the second is what frees a child to focus on the first. Where that fluency hadn't been secured, and Year 6 teachers were still teaching the basics of punctuation, handwriting or spelling, there was little capacity left for craft, and it capped attainment.
If your Year 6 team is still shouldering this, the fix isn't a Year 6 fix. Start with an honest conversation between Year 6 teachers and your English lead about exactly which gaps are being closed, and where, so the whole key stage can build a shared plan together. Transcription secured early is a KS2 project, not a Year 6 rescue mission. Our most successful schools treated fluent handwriting, confident spelling and secure command of the punctuation taught across KS1 and lower KS2 as the foundation to have in place on arrival in Year 6, which then freed teachers to hone and extend those skills, teaching the more advanced punctuation the curriculum expects at this stage and, crucially, the how: the impact a choice has on a reader.
That word, dialogue, matters. In many of the pieces we read, there was speech, a character talking, or a line dropped in because the task asked for one, but there wasn't dialogue: genuine interaction between characters. Speech punctuated correctly earns a tick, but on its own it doesn't lift a piece.
If your pupils' speech reads as filler rather than genuine dialogue, shift the focus from inserting speech to earning it. Secure the punctuation early, well before Year 6, so that by Year 6 the attention can be on what dialogue is for. Then teach children to use it only where it does a job: a real exchange between characters that reveals who they are and moves the story forward. Try giving them a scene and asking them to write an exchange that changes something, then compare it with a version where a character simply speaks at the reader. Talk about why an author lets characters talk here and stays silent there. In our most successful schools, dialogue was never directed for its own sake; it appeared where it was needed, gave us characterisation and pushed the narrative on, real interaction with depth, not just speech marks in the right place.
Where writing tasks felt like exercises, children wrote dutifully but without ownership, and it showed in flat, disconnected collections.
If this sounds familiar, it's worth a pause. Review your writing purposes and audience mapping across the key stage. The national curriculum asks children to write for a range of purposes and audiences with real awareness of the reader; it does not prescribe a fixed list. That is a freedom, not a gap: the strongest curricula we saw were shaped by teachers' own professional choices, purposes and audiences chosen because they suited these children, this class, this moment, rather than lifted from a mandated roll-call of genres. Many schools make it manageable by organising writing around a few core purposes, such as writing to entertain, to inform, to persuade and to discuss. Then look honestly at your collections and ask: which pieces did pupils really connect with and enjoy, and which did they simply go through the motions on? When the purpose was real and the audience genuine, the writing had life, the evidence was plentiful, and the judgements were easy to make because the writers had something to say.
Independence is the quiet foundation of every framework judgement. It is also the one thing a finished piece can't show on its face: read cold, a heavily scaffolded paragraph and a genuinely independent one can look alike. Where teachers weren't confident about how much of the writing was truly the child's own, judgements wavered, and rightly so. But where children had real ownership of their writing, it was unmistakable, and often, it was where the writing came most alive.
If you're ever unsure how independent a piece really is, build ownership in from the start rather than trying to prove it at the end. Give children genuine choices about what and how they write, and make room for writing that isn't tightly planned, because independence and enjoyment tend to arrive together. Some of the most compelling evidence we saw came from short, unplanned pieces. In one school, children wrote extraordinarily moving responses to a Pobble 365 image, independently drawing on their WW2 learning in a way the teacher hadn't planned for. The writing was unique, powerful and entirely theirs, and you could feel how much they had enjoyed producing it. That is what genuine independence looks like: not a box ticked, but a child with something of their own to say, saying it in their own way.
Over-marking, child-facing tick-lists children couldn't decode, and a pile of “next steps” with no chance to act on them were all common, and all counter-productive.
If your feedback feels like it's overwhelming rather than moving children on, try trading volume for focus. Pick one thing that will make the biggest difference to this writer and say it clearly, rather than annotating everything. Root it in what the child was trying to do, name what they can already do well, and, above all, build in a chance to act on the guidance before the next judgement is made: feedback with nowhere to land changes nothing. In our most successful schools, feedback across the year was purposeful and motivational, and children could always see how to use it next time.
The clearest pattern of all was this: where a school had a genuinely positive assessment culture, moderation was welcomed rather than endured. In many cases that culture was one we had helped build. The schools where moderation felt like a professional conversation rather than a judgement day were often the ones that had worked with us across the year, refining judgements together, sharing evidence and shaping next steps long before the statutory window arrived. In those schools, moderation wasn't experienced as scrutiny or a hunt for what was wrong. It was understood for what it is meant to be: a professional conversation that refines judgements and helps colleagues support one another with ideas and sensible next steps. The purpose was never a flattering percentage on a dashboard; it was a shared, secure judgement that everyone could stand behind, honest and true to the child.
If assessment in your school still feels like it's about the data, gently turn it back towards the writing and the writer. A positive assessment culture prizes refining the judgement together over pushing a number up, and it is built long before the statutory window. Read whole pieces aloud to one another across a collection, and let what you enjoyed as a reader lead the conversation while the framework shapes it, rather than opening with a feature-spotting hunt. Use moderation to genuinely help one another: to test a judgement that isn't quite settled, to share what worked, and to agree purposeful next steps for a child, not to defend a figure on a spreadsheet. That read-aloud habit does something else, too. In so many schools this year, moderators didn't need to know a child to know how much they had enjoyed writing a piece; they simply heard it, read out loud, and it was unmistakable. You don't need a parallel class to do this. Even in a one-form-entry school, a Year 6 teacher can ask for moderation support in a staff meeting and have colleagues read the pieces aloud to them, so they can simply listen. Being read to lets you step out of marking mode for a moment and hear the writing as a reader, which is often when a judgement becomes clear. None of this is accidental, and it doesn't hold by luck. A culture like this is designed and then protected, which is exactly what our remote moderation model is built to make consistent: the same welcoming, refining conversation available to every school, with training and year-round support so it doesn't depend on who happens to be in the room. Get the culture right, and moderation stops being a test and becomes what it should be: a shared, professional celebration of writing you are proud of and confident in.
None of these is quick fixes you bolt on in the summer term. They are the product of curriculum design, an assessment culture, and year-round support that starts long before Year 6 teachers submit their final judgements via NCA tools in June. But every one of them is within reach, and the schools that get there are rarely doing it alone.
Want help working through any of these with your team? Pobble is a statutory moderation provider for academies, free schools and independent schools across England, delivered in partnership with Hackney Local Authority, wherever you are. Maintained schools benefit too, through year-round moderation support and non-statutory moderation for every year group, not just Year 6. Book a call, and we'll help you find your next step.
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