Yr 8 English - should they be reading the whole text?

We have to buy the English Lit books. cheap on eBay. I’d buy it and encourage your dd to read it. So poor to not finish the book

From your update that sounds more like poor planning and running out of time then.

It's worth being aware that academies don't have to follow the KS3 programme of study. I know of some where all KS3 is extract based and driven by the GCSE paper question formats. It sounds horrifyingly boring to teach and study in my opinion.

Thank goodness that although my kids are at a non selective comp. they bring books home, they get reading homework, they have to write essays for homework, it’s all marked to a good standard and my kids are required to act on the feedback. And in yr 8 the books are less complex. I had to share books with classmates back in the 70s/80s, it seems things get worse, not better. How depressing.

I once met someone socially who, during the course of our conversation, revealed that she had written her English degree dissertation on one of my (at the time) favourite authors.

My joy evaporated instantly when she then said that she'd written her dissertation (and got her degree) without ever having actually read any of his books.

Can you get it from the public library and read it at home? Even if it's not in stock, I think you can generally order children's books for free. If it were me I think I would be strongly encouraging my DC to read the whole text even if school don't require it. Though it's good that they've watched the whole film at school, as it's a fab film and will give the broader context. (NB DS in Year 7 has only done one book so far - had own copy and read the whole thing as a combination of class reading and homework of reading and precis-ing - independent school, so obviously different in terms of funding available for books.)

I was quite shocked when my granddaughter only had to read one Act of The Tempest in Key Stage 3, and the teacher hadn't told them anything about the play at all.
The same grandchild had to spend the whole of Year7 studying The Monkey's Paw, a very short story.

Mine are still in primary, but I would be heavily encouraging the reading of full texts whether it was a school expectation or not. It shows a disappointing lack of intellectual curiosity for them not to. I would be disappointed in a school that didn't at least encourage it, even if they aren't allowed to demand it.
Can kids not get free downloads with their library cards? I'd want to spend a lesson getting them all set up on that, even if they never actually set foot in the physical library.

It's not unusual in KS3 pre GCSE. It also depends on what the learning objective and assessment focus is for the teaching unit.

I should add these students are at grammars if that makes a difference.

My DD's were sent home with books to read as homework

I've no knowledge of that particular text (other than reading it 15 years ago!) as English isn't my subject but the students I know in y7/8 do read the entire text of books they study (mostly as homework - they are leant copies of the book) and answer questions as they go. For example homework is read chapters 7-9. Write a brief summary of each chapter and comment on how the descriptions add suspense in chapter 8.

The homework system probably replaces knowledge recall that would have been done in lesson and the lesson time is now spent on extended writing. (I'm obviously not an English specialist!).

The knowledge recall is important to be able to write effectively and well. Also having self marking knowledge recall means teacher time can be spent properly marking extended writing and providing live feedback in lessons on students writing. Makes more sense to do it this way in my head.

From a Maths pov, actually marking questions as right or wrong can be done by students. The important thing as a teacher is why students have gone wrong. If they all have the same question wrong there's usually 2/3 different misconceptions which need further teaching. There's no point a teacher writing the same thing in each book, instead a live example of why students went wrong and another similar question to answer is much more effective than any red pen. (Sorry we've gone very off topic here!)

At the school I work in we skip whole acts in Romeo and Juliet just to study the key scenes and have the key quotes for their GCSE's

Cynically I think it was introduced to reduce marking

Why is this a bad thing?

Evidence shows that marking is one of the least effective ways to help students make progress with learning. (despite many schools still insisting upon every piece of work being marked).

We don't have enough books. We don't have enough money for more books. It will increasingly be the case that this happens. I dislike this greatly. In my English department we also wouldn't have enough space to store all the books. We don't have enough space as it is.

Schools can't store every book ever - things get thrown away.
Fiction dates. In my first school I taught a book on which s central plot point involved this new fangled thing called the internet... Can't teach that now!
Books get removed from specifications - pretty much every school teaching To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men at ks3 are going do because they used to be GCSE texts and now they have surplus books.
Cheap paperbacks fall apart. Expensive text books last longer.

When I was at school we had a book each! The English base was full of copies of texts not currently in use. It’s not like schools have to buy all new books every year. My half sister is 20 years younger than I am and last week she sent me a photo of my name in her Higher Maths textbook.

Year 8 seems quite early for TKAMB though

We had to buy all essential texts for school and I remember buying this for DS. I would buy them from eBay for a couple of quid. He had to read it at home and then it was discussed and read again during lessons.

Not sure what 6410 is ! Meant to be , in year 10