Maths text books

[negrilbaby]

I'm taking up a new post as HoD and want to ask any maths teachers out there about the text books they use for the new 9-1 GCSE mathematics.
Can you let me know any pros and cons about whatever you use at the moment?
All responses greatly appreciated. I have looked through so many but until you actually use one for a period of time, you don't see how they really are.

[noblegiraffe]

We can't afford new textbooks, but when we looked through the sample copies when the specs first came out, they all looked pretty awful, tbh. Absolutely massive books (they need Foundation, Intermediate, Higher at least, not just two books), tiny writing, hugely varied level of difficulty - some of the foundation stuff was ridiculous. This was before the SAMs were scrapped, so I guess they have released new editions since?

[negrilbaby]

I was hoping someone might have something they could recommend. We've been using Pearsons for Edexcel and I don't like it - but I can't see that the others are any better.
The main problem is the speed with which the difficulty ramps up on a topic. The students get no opportunity to get to grips with anything.

[GHGN]

All the textbooks are rubbish. All were rushed through to sell to schools who were desperate to have something to teach. I wasn't the HoD at the time so when I proposed the idea that we carried using a mixture of old textbooks and resources that we could have written ourselves, I was told that it was difficult to do, noone had time to do it. Two years on, lots of resources had to be put together. The Pearson textbook was a pile of rubbish. Not enough practice on some key topics and they jump all over the place in terms of difficulty. At least now people listened to my advice to not buy A Level textbook yet.
If you have to buy textbook then prepare to supplement with lots of resources. If I am to start a new department with the right staff, I would just use the MEP textbook and supplement with other things like Tenticks and resources from the internet.