Nick Gibb calls for a teacher-led return to textbooks

TES resources are free

I see some are, I looked up 'maths GCSE' resources and on the first page 4 are free but 17 aren't. And there doesn't seem to many teachers giving feedback, which must be crucial to know if anything worth buying. Is it just in its infancy, or do not very many teachers use it?

You mean like TES resources?

If it can find a way to be financially feasible on a free to access basis (which it isn't at the moment) and find a way to get more users active to enable confidence in the material.

You mean like TES resources?

What about a private company providing a 'central database' for teachers to upload educational content,

I think that it may happen without business/govt involvement. I've found Facebook pages where teachers are freely sharing resources, one of which has hundreds of worksheets/PP presentations freely available for download and that's just for a single GCSE subject for just one exam board. Add to that all the free youtube tutorials. The educational businesses may well be on their way out anyway unless they can find a business model to compete.

Why isn't there a central database?
What about a private company providing a 'central database' for teachers to upload educational content, which can then be downloaded by schools for free. The creators are then paid for their work based on number of likes downloads. A bit like youtube for education material (so not just videos).

I cannot understand why, rather than books, the information which is needed for the curriculum is not put into a computer site.

This is where the ideologies of conservative ministers and the progressive education establishment are in agreement, although for different reasons. The conservatives believe in competing marketplace driving up standards; and the education establishment resists the idea for the same reason that they resist the idea of government approved textbooks: they want to limit the power of government to control the curriculum at that level of detail, particularly for the humanities like history or English.

There seems to be thousands of teachers all re-inventing the wheel by writing their own worksheets and lesson plans

Many teachers have been told during their training that this is the most important aspect of teaching: using their creativity to design their own lessons.{see my post with the link above] And of course to some extent that is necessary, given the differences between classes. Also, there are big disagreements across the profession on HOW the curriculum should be delivered: should children be receiving explicit instruction and practice or should they be "discovering" things on their own? These disagreements would make centralised lesson plans very difficult, and they would be seen as dictatorial. Plenty of teachers even object to being told to teach reading via synthetic phonics, despite all the evidence in its favour.

i.e. by use of multiple choice questions

Multiple choice questions have been a huge no-no for the education establishment, for a number of years. Not allowing sufficient scope for creativity, just testing regurgitation of facts rather than understanding, etc etc. Never mind that they can be useful in many [not all] circumstances, and if carefully designed can tell a teacher a lot about what pupils' misconceptions are. They represent everything that progressive educators are against, and would be frowned on heavily in many schools.

I cannot understand why, rather than books, the information which is needed for the curriculum is not put into a computer site.

This is what I can't understand. There seems to be thousands of teachers all re-inventing the wheel by writing their own worksheets and lesson plans. Why isn't there a central database? We clearly have massive waste issues re out of date textbooks and quality issues? Online resources, both for teachers and pupils seems to be an obvious answer, which yes, could quickly/easily be updated when the syllabus changes. It could also include automatic marking i.e. by use of multiple choice questions, and numeric answers for relevant subjects. Yes, the cost would be enormous, but surely less over a period of time than individual schools buying textbooks and it would answer the teachers' complaints of time shortages.

I have not read the whole thread, but I cannot understand why, rather than books, the information which is needed for the curriculum is not put into a computer site. Programmes can be easily changed with the latest whim of the education minister. Every school aged child could be given free access thus levelling the playing field a little. Information can be in moving diagrams or videos.

Not since the printing press has there been such a revolution in information technology. In education we need to move on from illumined manuscripts.

Bizarrely, at parents' evening last week for Y8 DS, his maths teacher recommended getting the AQA GCSE maths book. It's got mixed reviews on Amazon. Also, isn't there a KS3 maths book?! I know our school has a 3-year KS4 for maths and science but this seemed a tad premature!
Very sad to see how our eyes lit up at an actual textbook, though!

A further advantage of having pupils read well-written 'old-fashioned' type textbooks is that they familiarise them with an academic writing style, as opposed to the diet of pure fiction that constitutes the majority of children's reading.

I have never understood how children are suddenly expected to write academic essays in Year 9 or 10, having never read anything written in that style. Textbooks for the humanities, in particular, make extensive use of academic vocabulary, transition techniques, varying types of topic sentences, etc. They also provide examples of how to structure arguments relating to cause and effect, for example, and how to deal successfully with a number of points while giving appropriate weight to each.

Pupils who have had the benefit of being exposed regularly to this will
be hugely advantaged over those whose experience of learning academic writing skills consists mainly of being told to write in a 'PEE' style

I honestly can't see how this isn't a matter of ideology rather than pure economics.

Indeed. I've seen a number of teachers report over the years that using textbooks was denigrated during their teacher training (ITT), as lacking creativity, being lazy, being poor practice, etc. See, for example, three teachers on this thread:

twitter.com/RufusWilliam/status/936978247119712256

In my local primary school the PTA had to buy the e readers and they are only used for certain lessons.

I have not come across any Maths textbook that even comes close to Modern Mathematics for Schools (Scottish Mathematics Group).

noble I think there's a copy of those somewhere amongst our treasury of textbooks through the ages, and I certainly used SMP when I was at school, although ours was a collection of booklets that we all worked through at our own pace when "individual learning" was all the rage. Unsurprising, that didn't work too well for many pupils, so we moved to whole class teaching for GCSE. Using these textbooks, which are the ones still on my bookshelf. They're actually very good, and have plenty of tricky problem solving questions in, but don't cover all the new topics in the GCSE, and the kids laugh at the decades of past pupils and ancient graffiti written in them.

I found the policy paper from 2014 interesting, particularly when it states that some schools arent willing to pay for books but are willing to double enter students for GCSEs

www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/images/181744-why-textbooks-count-tim-oates.pdf

I think the e readers only work in schools where it is part and parcel of the lessons too, the ones where the lessons powerpoints and homework is all available and where the books are automatically uploaded to the tablet or available through an app on there with no convoluted login processes.

Universities seem to be going to the e book subscription route, so I wonder if it will filter down in time?

I have only seen one primary school embracing e readers (using the bug club portal so you got the correct book band books for learning to read) but some secondaries seem quite committed to it.

In my last school there were precisely one class set of each textbook to be used in emergencies only - such as unexpected illness where the teacher was actually too ill to set "proper" cover. I actually had hidden in some of my cupboards a set of the Chemistry for you, and same for physics and biology, which I surreptitiously used as they were brilliant. Clear concise illustrations and diagrams, increasingly difficult/probing questions. Just all round good and reliable.
They got binned during a refurbishment one summer. I was so upset.
Textbooks definitely have their place. I never understood why they were anathema!

The other thing about e readers is they haven't taken off . Kids don't like them. they want to use highlighters and physically use them. There is an online version of the poetry anthology provided by AQA and all the set texts. Not one child in my class last year accessed it. One of the issues was incredibly convoluted sign up and log in procedures.

But, anyway, the fact of the matter is many children don't learn well from screens for a whole host of reasons and there really really aren't schools stuffed full of ipads and Kindles (not even laptops or PCs!)

I have a dc in Y7 at a prep school, preparing for common entrance at the end of Y8. The syllabus changes a little slower than a container ship in frozen treacle, so the textbooks don’t go out of date. DC has excellent textbooks, from which he enjoys learning. I have 2 DC in state school. For Ofsted reasons, it seems to be preferable for teachers to personally create each lesson from scratch rather than use textbooks which already have expertly assessed material therein. And the school couldn’t afford them - it can barely afford readers for KS1

Julie 8008 - love the sound of your school. Facilities sound indie level or you have the most well run state school in the uk! Could be a free school, of course? Presumably in an affluent area though as not every child at my DC's school had internet access at home. My DC's school said they would not buying the extra online books if they did manage to scrap together money for a textbook between 3 for GCSE level !

noble, have you seen the Pearson maths text books. I really like the KS3 ones and the way you can choose the strengthen or extend sections. The GCSE one is a bit big and heavy for a paperback - can't see it lasting too well and I'm not sure the "teaching" bits in it are laid out as well as at KS3 but it still has lots of practice and then strengthen or extension sections. It seems well matched to the new GCSE too.