Nick Gibb calls for a teacher-led return to textbooks

They don't like e readers. Society doesn't like them. They haven't taken off to anything like the extent that was predicted.

I love my kindle and I’m happy to read stuff on it, but I can’t get on with it for studying textbooks etc.

I suspect from a getting things into your long term memory point of view it would have the same limitations as using computers over paper and pen.

It would probably work if the kids were only using the kindle to access the text though.

The issue with e readers as far as English goes is annotation and , for other subjects, loss of key diagrams and pictures . Then there's the fact that schools don't have e Readers!

You can 'highlight' on a kindle and as for diagram - there should be an A4 sized colour kindle for schools.

Corrections could be made and sent to schools, teachers should be able to add worksheets etc etc.

For English Lit many of the texts studied are already available as free downloads.

Totally with you on the ‘research’ homeework. Unless the skills of how to research have been explicitly taught before. Or it’s a very specific set of instructions.

I agree with proper textbooks for the various topics - enhanced by teachers and adapted as needed. I think as pp mentioned using a textbook is a skill in itself. I also strongly dislike the sort of homework that was given at primary to vaguely use the internet to do 'research'. KS2 children need to directed to specific websites aimed at their age group and shown how to present information in their own words. Otherwise they think it's ok to cut and paste information.

But if you are teaching exactly the same objectives and doing the same activities, what difference does it make if it comes under the umbrella of ‘chocolate’ and you link it to other objectives you would also be teaching in that year group or whether you teach those objectives in isolation and call them history, geography and science?

And you could still use a textbook within that topic. If one existed.

Kokeshi we can agree to disagree - I like topics in primary and think my kids (and I) benefitted. I also see the benefit of both chronological study and topics at secondary. So far at secondary, DS2 (age 12) has studied ancient Britain, medieval England, Tudors as a dynasty compared to the Mughal dynasty. He is now studying the English civil war and the Stuarts. Normal state comprehensive. Sounds fine to me. If you put him on the spot and quizzed him He'd tell you that in his opinion history so far has been people chopping other people's heads off! However, the evidence of his school work is that his historical understanding is pretty good. Still has those dratted worksheets, though!
Why were you crossing out your comments?

Exactly. And it's not always a case of simple "mistakes"--it's also things like textbooks being written in styles that aren't great, or having an emphasis that might not be exactly what you want.

So you buy one for a trial. If you don't like it, don't buy it and buy something else instead. Publishers are only getting away with publishing crap because people are buying it. They'd soon improve their offerings if they didn't sell any!

Just going back to historyI would have thought that the fact that education is devolved between English, Scotland, NI and Wales (well.... I think Wales has its own curriculum proper from 2019, if I remember rightly) would make it easier to have standardized history curriculaeach country can just do its own curriculum for history, and there is no need for one curriculum which has to stand for all of them. I actually teach my child both world and British history in roughly chronological order--believe me, it is perfectly possible.

I think topics like "chocolate" are OK as extras or a bit of fun (the sort of thing I'd like to see being done in after school activities or summer enrichment programs), but if history as a whole is mostly handled like this, you are going to end up with kids who have absolutely no coherent knowledge of what happened and when in the world. My nephews' lack of knowledge of the most basic history stuff horrifies me --and they go to a relatively "good" school.

Exactly. And it's not always a case of simple "mistakes"--it's also things like textbooks being written in styles that aren't great, or having an emphasis that might not be exactly what you want.

In England, the lack of a detailed content-based curriculum tends to lead to a situation where the exams/tests effectively "become" the curriculum. So textbooks end up being about cramming your way through a particular exam, rather than being about developing an excellent knowledge base of the subject.

I have tried UK textbooks in the past and I just gave up. Galore Park were the only ones that appeared to be decent quality. I use those, plus Singaporean textbooks and (for maths) the American series Singapore Math which is American but is based closely on the Singaporean curriculum and teaching styles.

Because mistakes aren't always noticed immediately. Especially in maths I would have thought.

The Film GCSE textbook is 400 pages along. I couldn't pore over every page to look for every error!

With the best will in the world, no teacher has time to do this. The proof reading stage is flawed because the new specs were ratified so late everything in the end had to be rushed out to appease expectant schools.

On a related note, a lot of A Level textbooks STILL aren't out. It really is no wonder teachers rely on networks of resources.

If textbooks are so bad, why aren't schools sending them back for refunds - that's the only way to make the publishers take notice and improve their offerings?

I bought a text book for my son last year - the Edexcel Physics GCSE text book. It was rubbish - I sent it back and got a refund and bought the AQA one instead. 5 minutes to compare syllabi to see the few fundamental differences, a few post-it notes to tell him which bits not to do and a couple of post it notes at the front to say what isn't included, and hey presto.

In most countries in the world, textbooks are written by a team of experts, and there is a team of editors and proof-readers as well. This is because a large enough proportion of schools in those countries use them, so that it becomes cost-effective to provide that level of quality.

The reason this is less likely to be the case in England is because demand was sharply reduced during the last 50 years, making such a level of commitment to quality not cost-effective.

Yes, but they are the only things containing errors which cost £30 - £40!

kazzy I did mention above that maths textbooks, in particular , have recently been found to be riddled with errors and the I have found many mistakes in the GCSE Film textbook!

Indeed, but "MyMaths" online system also had errors and so do some of the worksheets my son has brought home which were made by the teachers. My point was that text books aren't the only materials that contain errors.

kazzy I did mention above that maths textbooks, in particular , have recently been found to be riddled with errors and the I have found many mistakes in the GCSE Film textbook!

The big mistake you are making gruach is blithely assuming the textbooks are written by experts.

But surely a text book written by a team, including editors, proof-readers, etc., is more likely to be more complete & correct than loads of home made worksheets created by hundreds of random teachers - of course, some will be wonderful, but many will also include errors, omissions, etc.

Chocolate is a fairly popular topic in ks2 because it links easily to lots of areas of the curriculum - literacy, history, geography, science, DT and there’s the contemporary relevance too.

Worksheets stuck into books is a total waste of paper. Not only the worksheet but also the page of the exercise book you’ve stuck it onto.

You could have a ks2 history text book. It doesn’t matter that the curriculum isn’t specified in minute detail. The problem is that like most textbooks, it’s only going to last until the next curriculum change. The periods of history studied in ks2 now aren’t necessarily the same ones that will be studied when the next government get in.

Just to add though I hate worksheets stuck into KS3 and KS4 books more than I can say!
And a really good maths textbook for each child would be very welcome, too!

We did a topic on chocolate back in my junior school in the 1950s.

You'll struggle to produce a centralised History book for KS2, not least because of a devolved Education system between England, Scotland, Wales and N Ireland, all of which would have different and valid perspectives!
Topic teaching is a good way of dealing with it and I think that's why the books you've seen are pretty general. It asks a lot of the teacher but it enables them to teach the skills in a country that is far more diverse (not just immigration, think Celtic nations too) than Finland or Japan.
By the way, I don't recall a topic on Chocolate with my children but it is an absolutely brilliant one to do, for geography, history and current affairs. It has appeal to the age group and contemporary relevance!

Even KS2 looks really vague compared with the kind of detailed, item-by-item descriptions which you tend to get for the curriculum in many other countries, believe me.

"I thought the national curriculum was introduced to standardise what is taught?"

Well, it certainly standardized things compared to pre-National Curriculum, when schools only had a statutory requirement to teach RE (I think?)--everything else was up for them to decide.

However, I don't think England has ever had a really detailed content-based curriculum supported by standardized textbooks, like France, Finland, Japan and many other countries. If you live in one of these countries, England's curriculum and its lack of specificity looks extremely odd, quite honestly. (I do think that England's education system gets many other important things right, however, so I'm not just slagging it off.)

I think that the reason why England has never had a specific and detailed curriculum is because England resisted central control of education for a long time, and then by the time central control was eventually permitted, the Plowden report had already happened and education had started to develop along very progressive lines, meaning that content was played down and there was an emphasis on teaching "skills," doing topic work and so on.