No textbooks and using the internet for collating info for projects - WTF

Willow That may be true in this country, but there are lots of other countries where textbooks are standard (Finland, for example). It might be worth considering what they do differently to make this possible (only changing the curriculum every 10 years, for example!).

I accept that most schools would find it impossible, especially in the current financial climate, but that shouldn't prevent people from discussing and considering the issue.

As a teacher I can say that it is physically impossible to provide text books for every student until POSSIBLY GCSE, but more likely A Level. I provide them from GCSE upwards as I have smallish numbers. But there is no way I could provide them at KS3 as my budget doesn't go that far. Plus I don't always use them and I definitely don't use one text book throughout the whole year. I might do one topic for a term from a book, but then do something that is either not in a text book or from a different one. I have to think about what I want to cover and what I want students to get from the lesson and plan it accordingly. A text book may not do that. I wish it was as easy as pulling out a text book and teaching from that!

The internet is a great support tool for different subjects but for basic revision and reference a book is very useful. It also saves time as all this searching and filtering to get what you actually need is very time consuming.

As an adult if you wanted to find something out would you rely on a textbook or the internet? Personally I would go to the internet, so in my mind think it would be more beneficial for a child to learn to use the internet to find information and learn how to filter it to find what they need. If the teacher directed them to the exact information they may as well print it for them too so they can just shove it in the bottom of their backpack instead of spending time on it themselves.

If your child doesn’t have the skills to use the internet correctly don’t blame the school, teach them yourself! Schools have very little time to teach a large amount of information, instead of blaming them for gaps in your child’s knowledge help plug the gaps.

BlindLemonAlley
It depends if students are taught how to note take and revise.

If it's just a case of 'classwork goes in exercise book' then I agree with you. Some books I see on book looks are no use to students at all.

However, revision guides tend not to have the top end content in as much for English (at least that's what we find). You only have to look at the difference between a CGP guide and thr Mr Bruff videos on Youtube to see the difference between a revision guide and high quality notes taken from a good teacher who knows their stuff.

I have nothing against textbooks or revision guides as such. They have their uses as part of a wider strategy, but I think they can end up being a highly time consuming way of revising for limited impact.

Another advantage of textbooks is that they can provide a safety net if teaching is inadequate for some reason, at least for the more able pupils. Not ideal, of course, but better than nothing.

My dd is in year 7 at an independent school, so cost is not so much of an issue. She does have a couple textbooks ( for languages) but, yes, a lot seems internet based. I also have an issue with that because as other have pointed out, you really need to learn about which sources to reply on and how to find them, etc. We have a whole generation of kids who really have no idea how to research things properly and only know how to put words into google...

What Scipio said - x 1000.

I have purchased textbooks and revision guides for my DCs. Revision using the mish mash of hand outs and their notes taken in lesson is just impossible. There is just not enough detail or structure in what they are given at school to be able to revise properly. The textbooks and revision guides have better explanations and make it easier to understand, especially if it is a topic that was covered a few months ago.

One way round it is teachers making material.
For my GCSE and A level courses I make booklets to give studnets and make them electronically available.
There's also direct links to strategies we do in class etc too.

We use PP funds to buy revision materials for those students.
No point buying them for all to keep each year and no point having class sets to borrow each year as some end up lost/damaged/we don't teach using them etc.

I'm of the opinion that students waste too much time revising just copying out revision guides. If their exercise books are well structured and well presented then all the material is there.

E.g. My Y11s have the following all in their exercise
Set Texts
Overview of text
Detailed contextual
Detailed notes on each chapter /
key quotations for each section
Key quotations fir each character
key quotations for each theme
Exam question overview
Exam skill strategy
Series of model answers from grade 4
step by step guides to approach the question
Copies of the mark scheme in student friendly terms
All their essays
Targeted feedback
Their redrafts
Revision graphic organisers
Essay plans for the big ideas

Then they get a small booklet from me with reminders, revision activities etc.

I could buy a stack of textbooks if we had the money, but in all honesty i'd end up spending half my life adapting it anyway to suit the class.

At A Level however, there's some great text books. We have limited copies but I wish we could have more. I give out copies from some of my pages and advise students to get it or see me if they can't.

I agree Chocolate. DD's school make it very lear that revision guides are an excellent resource, but they have to be paid for (very underfunded state school). They are cheaper to buy from school than Amazon.

I think textbooks are very important resources. Clearly they are not the only resource and saying they are important is not saying every lesson should be based around textbooks. However, as others have said, they are very important for successful revision. Children need to be able to flick forward and check back on topics and see links between them. A load of handouts never replicate a text book and neither does an Internet resource.

I've known families move between state and private education and this has been one of the key differences they notice - textbooks are standard issue at independent schools. Doesn't mean they are used hugely frequently lower down, but most students find them helpful for revision and especially as they go up the school.

And yes, parents who can afford books, do buy them. If you're doing 8 GCSEs, that's probably £100+ just for revision guides, which are brief summaries. I'd argue it's much easier to do well with those resources than without. I totally understand that books are expensive....but to stop supplying them is a sign in my mind that budgets have been cut too far. The gap between the private and state experience just seems to grow unless you're middle class and can access the resources.

You can add "KS3" to the search and it brings up suitable websites for that age group like Bitesize. Our school adds loads of information to the online portal for revision

I think ‘tailoring to their ability’ is a euphemism which schools use rather than the reality that textbooks aren’t affordable due to cuts in funding and constantly changing specs. Printouts also unaffordable so if pupils research at home the cost of printing goes to parents.

It is ridiculous to expect children to wade through huge amounts of information at various levels (some of it more likely wrong or from dubious sources than if it were in textbooks) to find the actual knowledge (e.g. for the schisms in the churches, under GCSE Level, most likely looking for Henry VIII vs Catholicism and rise of Protestantism in Weatern Europe in 1500s. But a child could research in depth about Mormonism in Utah in 1870s and still have worked as hard and followed instructions - and got entirely useless knowledge for the scheme of work.

When I occasionally give internet research I always give some starting websites which I’ve found are useful/right level. I’m lucky enough to still have had textbooks (my subject doesn’t change that much and I’ve recently worked in independents so photocopying etc was much easier to afford).

When it comes to revision, children will often have a rag tag assortment of printouts and they can’t go back to an authoritative source and know that the information they are covering is what they need. I completely agree with kesstrel : this is a worrying pretence that skills are superior to knowledge and it discriminates against children from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds, generally.

Of course, they should learn internet research skills and by the time they are in sixth form should be able to use the internet much more extensively.

OP, no I wouldn't say that's normal. But then, I don't know exactly what you're supposed to be researching, as Jobs in London is pretty broad.

I had in mind them having to look up the types of jobs that have been in London in the past that aren't around now, or which sector is the largest.

DD is in year 13, and the only textbooks she had provided in KS3 and KS4 was for her English literature GCSE. At A level the school provided textbooks for psychology, chemistry and biology, but we have had to buy the geography textbook.

I think the reasons behind the lack of textbooks are perfectly valid:
Lack of funding
Exam specs changing
Tailoring work according to the pupil’s ability

It does make it more expensive for parents – printer cartridges and paper. Plus it helps to have parents who are computer literate. If your child goes on to do any A level science subjects I would advise that you buy shares in your printer cartridge supplier . All the science subjects have anything between 8 and 12 page homeworks that need to be printed off before completing.

“I am going to be interested in how revision is going to be done without text books to refer to?”

You will have to buy them. DD’s school sells the CGP revision guides and DD found them really helpful for her GCSEs. She achieved A* in all her subjects that she had the revision guides for.

I agree that it would help to guide the year 7s on how to search for something online as you need to think laterally sometimes, and maybe they don’t have the vocabulary to think of synonyms for the same word to maximise their searches.

We also had no textbooks. Well, we would have them in class, but not at home.

ourkidmolly

Search 'Why are there different Christian denominations?' on Google, loads of info on it.

I'm not sure what is so hard about key word searching. Has she not used the internet much beforehand? This is pretty normal. If everything coming up is too difficult, just type 'easy', 'simple', 'for kids', or whatever after your search terms.

What is it about the Jobs in London project that is the issue?

As far as revision for GCSEs go, switched-on parents who can afford it buy the appropriate "revision guide2 for the spec. The rest just have to struggle through.

These ridiculous Internet search homeworks drove me batty (past that stage now). I did eventually work out that it can help if you put, in addition to the search term, something like "Key stage 3" but that doesn't always work. I feel sorry for the kids who don't have reasonably knowledgeable parents to help them. It's a classic example of the under-estimation of how much knowledge is needed to gain more knowledge, while pretending that "skills" are all you need.

Another big problem with the absence of textbooks is that it means children get very little exposure to reading academic-style prose - the same kind of prose that they're somehow miraculously supposed to be able to use when they start writing essays.

East - west schism molly in the year 1054.

ourkidmolly
That's dreadful homework.

There's probably a timeline of churches splitting online somewhere. E.g. find the date when Henry 8th split from the catholic church and tall about the origins of the church if England.
Then find creation of methodism with Wesley.
Then Baptists
Then maybe look at eastern orthodox

Just an idea where to go but ut is a shockingly poorly framed piece of homework.