Nick Gibb calls for a teacher-led return to textbooks

It was. And there have always been designated periods that children must study during KS2 and 3.

The objective that Kartoshka is talking about there is from KS1 where it is deliberately vague because of the age of the children.

The topics in the new curriculum are different to the old one but it is possible to teach either using a cross-curricular approach.

As opposed to the kind of curriculum which have had in England which has generally been incredibly vague:

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

I live in a country which has textbooks for every subject and they come home every day . There are things I would change about the education system here, but I really really appreciate the fact that proper textbooks are used.

1/ It massively reduces the lesson-plannign workload for teachers, which in turn means that teachers can spend more time working with struggling students one-on-one, or in very small groups. This in turn makes it easier to teach the classes to a single level.

2/ It means I can see what she is actually studying. You have no idea how much easier this makes things. I have a record of what she has done, I can look ahead and see what will be coming up next, I can pre-teach stuff during the holidays to prepare her. I can go over things if she is not sure about something she did in the lesson. I can see what techniques she has been taught.

3/ It supports children with language issues. My daughter was a little behind in the national language when she started. It was helpful to be able to take out the textbook and go over stuff with her, if she missed something in the classroom. Some of my friends whose literacyin the national language is not great have found this esp helpful, because it helps them learn along with their child.

4/ It is a simple structured way to create a standardized detailed scheme-of-work curriculum which ensures that all kids cover the same material in the same schools.

My friends back in England send their kids to various schools. Because I am a nosy cow, I've looked at the curricula/SOW for their various schools. They are all over the place. One school will do history as a series of ages/periods, another does history in "themes" (chocolate, pirates, whatever), another does combined history/geog type thing, another does NO discrete subjects apart from English, maths and PE etc.--everything else is collapsed into "topics."

I am trying to imagine the flipping mess that the Key Stage 3 teachers must be faced with when they have all these 11yos from different schools who have all studied these completely different random collections of bits and pieces. How can you teach any class in KS3 history when for any topic, 1/3 of the kids will have done it already (= bored), 1/3 of the kids won't have enough background knowledge to be able to make sense of what you are talking about (= also bored)..... No wonder KS3 tends to be such a mess and is often openly described as the "lost years" when education in England is under discussion.

Needless to say, kids in "nice" state schools get to study the more rigorous history curricula. Kids in the less desirable primary schools get dumbed-down "fun" history that is heavy on the chocolate and the pirates etc..

5/ Fewer random shitty worksheets coming home. Amen to that.

How can you have a general history book, or geography book?
They do this in most countries that have textbooks, believe it or not.

They are able to do it because in these countries, there is a specific, detailed curriculum which states exactly what is to be studied at each level. So, "Year 2/Term 1, children will learn about Ancient Egypt, which will involve a) locating Egypt on the map b) locating and naming the main river c) learning about the origins of farming in Egypt and the role of inundation...." etc. etc.

As opposed to the kind of curriculum which have had in England which has generally been incredibly vague: "Pupils should be taught about: changes within living memory. Where appropriate, these should be used to reveal aspects of change in national life; events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally [for example, the Great Fire of London, the first aeroplane flight or events commemorated through festivals or anniversaries...." meaning that pupils in different schools end up learning completely different things, in completely different orders.

I’d add that it might have been a bit more effective if they hadn’t made such a fuck up of introducing it, Peregrina

Your point about the HW textbooks is something that’s come up on Primary Ed a couple of times before, noble. Often from parents who were educated in different systems and want to help their child who’s struggling with something.

I know it was something a friend of mine found difficult a couple of years ago when she was trying to support her y10 DD. She didn’t want to teach her child methods she’d been taught outside the UK and might conflict with what the school were doing. But she had no idea exactly what was being taught.

yep - honestly with all the photocopying done in our dept so far this year, we could have bought every single child studying our subject a very good textbook each......

students doing the research online is shite. they can be looking at anything, and most of it is not peer reviewed.
good textbooks give students a good point of reference.

Instead we are photocopying for hours on end and spending untold sums on reams of paper, ink, toner and paying two photocopying staff.

The leasing cost and servicing charges are also usually extortionate and often based on number of copies!

We don't have textbooks.
Instead we are photocopying for hours on end and spending untold sums on reams of paper, ink, toner and paying two photocopying staff.
It would work out much cheaper to have a textbook.

I sense that there is a consensus about the value of a good textbook.

I've been following this debate with interest, having dropped out of a PGCE maths some 20 years ago. I definitely was made to feel that using a text book was a crime then, so had to spend hours making up worksheets, which at best would only duplicate what could be found in a good textbook, and would usually be worse, because by definition, I lacked the experience to know what worked and what didn't.

One thing glossed over, Nick Gibb talks about the national curriculum not being as effective as they had hoped. No mention of their push towards Academy schools, who don't need to teach the NC or even to employ qualified teachers! It's part of a wider debate, so sorry if I derail a little here.

As a parent, I'd vote for textbooks. Relying on blummin bits of paper - that you are expected to glue into an exercise book is a bit daft.

Yep, same here. Scrappy worksheets should be severely limited to where they're really required. They're usually hard to read, either because they've been reduced in size to fit 2 A4 sheets on a single side, or they're printed faintly which makes trying to understand shaded diagrams impossible. Or the best was a b&w print of a colour chart - completely useless. The time spent in creating and standing over a copier, and the costs of the copier, must make them more expensive than text books in the first place. What's the point in buying exercise books if most of the pages are used up by gluing in scrappy worksheets? I think if they're going to insist on worksheets, then they need to be digitised and put on the schools SMH or VLE system - having papers floating around is antiquated considering the worksheet will have been created by computer, then printed and copied - why not just put the original computer version on a system which the pupils can see online - would also be more helpful when someone misses lessons due to schools trips, illness, etc., rather than waiting until a later lesson to pick up the worksheets missed.

As a parent, I'd vote for textbooks. Relying on blummin bits of paper - that you are expected to glue into an exercise book is a bit daft.

Being able to flick to the explanation page would be a God-send.

Absolutely agree. I take it for granted, as not needing to be stated, that the best way to use textbooks is to be able to take them home as well as them being used in class at the teacher's discretion. I was educated in such a system (and that same system exists today in many other parts of the world).

It provides the advantages of multiple sources of explanation (teacher and book); gives children an opportunity to develop a more independent approach to academic work, so they know what to do when they get to university; and provides a model of the language and conventions of the kind of academic writing they will need to use in their essays, as I suggested in an earlier post.

Except that's the wrong way around, isn't it? They don't need the explanations at school, just the exercises, because I'm there, and at home they do need the explanations because I'm not, but they don't have them!

^This exactly.

Children come home, attempt homework get frustrated, ask mum or dad for help, then get more frustrated because we can't remember or were taught a different method back in the dark ages. Being able to flick to the explanation page would be a God-send.

Just came across a good blog this morning discussing a number of different reasons why the author thinks textbook use has declined, including:

The belief that good teachers produce their own original resources seems to have become a pervasive one and, in some schools, almost a de facto Teacher Standard. Comments on a Twitter poll I ran suggested lots and lots of teachers would feel nervous using a textbook in an observed lesson for this reason.

bennewmark.wordpress.com/2017/12/08/where-did-textbooks-go/

Well worth a read.

As a parent, I like textbooks. If they are good.

If a child comes home with questions, we can flick through and read the explanation together. If extra practice questions are needed, they are provided, etc. And most importantly, if the teacher isn't great, you at least have a reference.

I agree that textbooks only work if the curriculum is stable.

In lreland schools use textbooks in Primary and Secondary . Parents buy them and each child has their own. Government pays an allowance towards costs to needy families. Schools also rent some to a child for a nominal fee. As a family we know this is the system and we are happy to pay as part of our childs education. Ireland is respected as a country with a good education system and our graduates are rwelcome all over the world.
As a teacher in lreland l would use a mixture of text books and other resources as would most teachers.
I always feel the English system is too much against textbooks and the workload on teachers is excessive.

Piggy no we didn't always do the homework, but you could get caught easily because there were lots of tests that were unannounced so you always had to be prepared.

I’ve seen lots of comments on MN over the years about how crap teachers left them to teach themselves from textbooks so I’m not sure that’s an educational approach to be applauded.

As a pp pointed out, the lack of use of textbooks in (state) schools has significant knock on consequences at university level, where textbooks are an essential part of learning.

State school students simply do not know how to use textbooks. They are so used to being handed sheets with exactly the information they need that they do not know how to go through textbooks and extract information. It is very obvious that UK state school students are at a disadvantage relative to UK private school and international students in this respect.

And I would echo what others have said upthread. The UK HE sector uses textbooks less than elsewhere in the world because to "justify" the 9k fees lecturers are meant to prepare their own resources. But in reality, for core material that is taught to all first and second year students, a textbook that somebody spent 5 years writing, lecturing every year to home the material and exercises, refereed at publication stage by multiple academics, is better than notes prepared by one lecturer. It is ridiculous to duplicate error to produce something that is inferior. (Of course, at university level, there is a lot of specialised material for which individual textbooks just don't exist - so fair enough that lecturers prepare their own notes on this.)

It's also kind of the way I have just taught a poem. Read this (photocopied!) bit of a book, discuss what we got from it and then answer questions (on a worksheet!) It all worked fine but they were a pretty able group and all girls so , in the main, highly literate, wiling to read and to ask for help and keen to achieve.

If I had 30 copies of the book I wouldn't have needed to do al the photocopying although the questions were my own because I am precious

madame I think that sounds like how the books are generally used in Finland too.

It all sounds great but does everyone always dot heir homework ? Or is that, too, a British malaise?