Nick Gibb calls for a teacher-led return to textbooks

I am waiting to see with interest how DD will learn, and be able to revise, when she starts secondary.

I can't imagine how you build up a useful background knowledge of the subject if you just have a collection of random worksheets - that will presumably get lost.

Wow where is your school?

Goodness this is an extraordinary discussion. And not being a teacher I hardly know where to begin.

All I know is I'm spending a lot of time atm talking to a child in their GCSE year about university choice and applications. They have a reasonable expectation of (shorthand) a Russell group or possibly Oxbridge for a 'traditional' subject. We've talked about supervisions/tutorials, one to one teaching, lectures and seminars. For all of these they will be expected to read books. At their school they use a mixture of textbooks and printed sheets - but are expected to make full use of the school libraries and read around subjects using mainstream academic works. So the leap to university shouldn't be too painful.

But how on earth do school leavers who use mainly worksheets manage the transition to traditional academic study?

I can't even articulate my confusion over the acceptance that learning is no longer centred on books written by experts on a topic ...

I don't understand what you are saying about the lack of text books. When we looked round secondary schools as prospective parents, they all had piles of shiny new exciting textbooks on show. Do they really not use them? They looked lovely and so engaging. I wanted to read them and learn!

My dcs don't have any textbooks at their grammars. They have battered homemade second hand books made from sheets if they're lucky. Nearly all homework takes the form of screenshots from phones or online. Just had to buy the CPG workbook series for science homework as requested by school. Slightly miffed as we in reality own the books which we couldn't really afford. Ds has a test to revise for but they're being marked so can't be used for revision. Not happy with all the online homework as teenage screen time is a nightmare to police as it is. Can't really take screens away when they need them for homework.
That said I'm not really sure what schools are supposed todo as ours are broke. There is zero money. Perhaps the gov would like to give some extra money for the books they desire.

I've just read Nick Gibb's speech to the centre right Policy Exchange. I think maybe my DCs are being educated in a parallel universe somewhere. Re textbooks, they were invisible at my DC's grammar. We would have loved them. Except one big problem - absolutely no money whatsoever for textbooks nor anything else. Opps, no, in RS there were ancient ones, one between 3 students! If Mr Gibb wants schools to buy textbooks he will have to given them the money, extra money and do so in good time so they can plan and budget accordingly. Newly published textbooks can be bought by schools with discounts of up to 50%/30% for an early order deadline. But forward budgeting won't be possible, as noble says, with the education dept revolving door as there are always new ministers with new and different ideas. Why worry about children's education when you've just got the plummiest job of your career and you want to make a big noise.

Just another sticking plaster idea to cover the cracks and gaping holes in funding for schools.

I'd like Nick Gibb to be an effective local MP. That would be a start.

I was an EAL student in US at grade7. Text book was god send for me, because I didn't understand what teacher was saying, but I was able to work out the text book at home and in class. I still remember Algebra1 text book with lots of past user's name written on it, and loved going through it because it was only thing that made sense back then for me.

My last school had formula one books, and I agree they are dire. Fortunately, my current school have rather more sensible ideas about textbooks, so we have textbooks with lots of questions which get harder throughout the exercise.

We have quite a historical record of maths textbooks in our store cupboards. Enough that when another local school was flooded and lost all their maths textbooks we managed to give them enough that they had a textbook for each class (possibly not the textbooks they would have chosen, but acceptable for teaching with until the insurance money came through), and STILL our cupboards are overflowing with old textbooks.

We haven't had Ofsted for a while though, so they might not approve of my use of textbooks. I won't be changing my normal practice, but I might change things a bit if Ofsted suddenly arrive.

I have textbooks. I've used textbooks in almost all my observed lessons for the past 10 years, and it has been fine (sometimes good, sometimes outstanding). We sacrificed our photocopying budget in order to buy textbooks for GCSE (2 years in a row because we could only afford one yeargroup at a time), and the new ones for the A level (which are not great as they just don't have enough questions on each topic). We can't let the kids take them home because we only have enough for one between two.

I have a lot of textbooks in my classroom. Some are new, some are old (some were published in the 90s, I was using them when I was doing GCSE). Almost everything I want to teach is in one of those textbooks to be found, and I am encouraged to use them in most lessons.

There was some report recently on, I think, The One Show which revealed the number of mistakes in maths textbooks!

The new GCSE textbook for film studies certainly ahs quite a lot of mistakes in it , and advice about answering questions which contradicts exam board advice. It is also £40.

The A level textbook is not out yet and no sign of it. Maybe Gibbsy could hurry it along.

I love a good textbook lesson.
And surprisingly many of the kids do too.
But yes, slt would not approve and I'd fail my qa and be in for a load more stress than I need if I started teaching from them regularly.
Also our new textbooks are total shit written by people who have no subject knowledge at all it seems.
Fuck off gibb.

CarrieBlue, in my country, text books needed to be paid in senior school.(16+, up to then, it's paid by the government.)
I also grew up partially in US, which we needed to hand back the text books in reasonable condition at the end of the year, or you get charged for it.

I teach Biology and I like a good textbook. We just had to buy new GCSE books for the new AQA syllabus and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the book we chose. Not cheap though at £20 each so we only bought two class sets and move them around classes. Definitely not to be taken home though. We suggest our pupils buy the CGP revision guides for home use. Interestingly, we have had an ofsted in the last month and they didn't make a single comment either for or against textbooks!

There were general textbooks. They’ve been thrown out by younger HoDs who couldn’t see that they were useful. We used to have two science textbooks per gcse student, plus ks3 ones. Mind you, getting them handed back in at the end of the year was always a challenge

I didn't know they were out of favour in tge uk. Still going strong in Italy and we have to buy them - about 300 euros a year at senior school!

I love the idea of text books. I grew up with it, my native country still uses it for all the subjects. I really don't like no text book teaching in England.

Why they change curriculum so much in Englad is a mystery to me. But as PP says, somethings never really change, do they? Like the maths I learned is same as my ds is learning now, etc.

DD was sharing a biology text book 1 between 4 for GCSE. I asked if there were extra copies, (answer - no, but at the front of the class the “lively” students had 1 each), or alternatively if I could buy her a text book (answer - no, the book being used was a previous version so DD would struggle to find the page if she had her own newer version)!
I’m all for anything which makes the teaching and learning easier, but the books would need to be available for several years so replacements can be bought when needed.

A school I looked at for year 7 open evening was still using the same textbook I had in year 7 about 20 years ago.

We used to have textbooks for all subjects....made our backpacks much heavier.