to think we shouldn't have to buy the set book for GCSE English Lit?

[chomalungma]

We have been asked to buy the book that DS is currently studying for GCSE Eng Lit.

Yes - I can afford it. But that's not the point. There are many families who are on tight budgets. Apparently other subjects require the parents to buy equipment as well.

English is a compulsory GCSE. The school should have sets available to read.

I know that schools are on very tight budgets. I am not blaming the school at all. It's not an academy.

I blame the Conservative party. I hope people remember these cuts and the effect they have had on their children for the last 10 years when it comes to the election.

@shiningstar2 our system around it was to write notes and annotations on seperate note pages or flash cards depending on what was most appropriate, we would then put sticky tabs in relevent ages or have the sections of the book written on the sperate note pages

@CassianAndor exactly how we did it

I left school some 15 year ago nearly, we had to buy our own stuff. Mostly for the reasons other posters have put above. Conservatives weren't in power then either so for once it wasn't them.

My gripe is school uniforms, they anger me how expensive they are already and I have a 3 week old haha

All this annotating books is anathema to me but apparently puts a thing now.

My DS has just gone into yr 9 and we’ve been given a list of 30 books and they need to pick at least 3 to read this year. I’ve ordered 14 from eBay so far and I’ve only spent £18. Just got another from fb marketplace for £1.

The books don’t have to be brand new.

Text books I can understand being a financial pressure to most families. And to be fair I'm not clear on how pupil premium gets used, I thought it helped pp families with the stuff that wealthier families are expected to pay for.
I can't understand set texts being the expensive bit. Do exam boards not still set texts that are out of copyright, so cost about £2?

@berlinbabylon there are back to school allowances for those with low earnings! In Ireland anyway.

sticky note pads - at uni when returning my books I had to spend time removing the sticker pads I stuck to the top of relevant pages - the beauty of these is they do not damage the books. if you use large ones you can write quite a lot of notes & define lines always write page numbers in case they drop off (rarely if you do this properly) if I took them in the uni library the librarians did not have a problem with them. this is where ebooks in the library do come into their own as you can write notes & refer to pages in the system for yourself. In other countries even in their state school system you had to buy not only the text book but exercise books BUT you could claim this back as a tax rebate - or at least a good proportion of it. The problem is that many schools have had their funding significantly cut except for the most part in the London area. I agree wholeheartedly that it should be free however I have my doubts that it will be

Due to the curriculum changes most kids in DDS year had to buy most text books and then lots of revision books.
After the exams we got busy with a rubber and DD have lots of books to a dot in the year below and the rest handed over to the school.If everyone did this everyone would be catered for.We were amazed at the amount of DDS friends who binned them.

I used to love underlining and annotating books. Still have some of them in my old room at my parents' house. Love to flick through them (am late 40s)

YABU. It would cost a fortune to provide so many copies. UK is only country I know of which provides things free. In EU countries pupils have to provide everything. Text books and exercise books themselves.

You realise schools have no money don’t you? Not just things are tight in schools, there is literally no spare money at all! Unless you are in a private school YABVU

YABVU. Parents have to buy little for school in the UK and if they begrudge buying items then maybe they shouldn’t have children.

It’s not the Tories to blame, we had to buy books under Labour so no difference.

Just buy a cheap, secondhand copy from EBay or Amazon!

OP yanbu and I am shocked by some of these individualistic and selfish responses. This is the narrative that has been driven by the Tories for the last 9 years - that the state can't afford to provide the most basic things for people who need them.

We are a rich country. There is plenty of money but it is not shared fairly. If we, as a society, don't believe that general taxation should fund a child's education then something has gone very wrong.

Of you can afford it, YABU and better hope your kids don't go to university! The price of those text book is astronomical. At least GCSE texts tend to be mass market books.

Think yourself lucky. I passed the 11 plus but there was just one grammar school so we had our names drawn out of a hat. I never have won a raffle and at age 16 worked to pay for evening classes to sit O'levels whilst doing CSEs at school.

If you think GCSEs are dear, then wait for A levels and University! Oh and open days for Unis!
We have had to buy ALL stationary and art equipment from yr 7. I don't grudge doing without for dgd because investing in making sure she had and has all resources needed for her study paid off with brilliant results at GCSE, fantastic predicted grades for Uni next year, and hopefully the completion of her dreams to study at Cambridge or RG uni.
Investing in education no matter how poor you may be is worth it.

Oh and I didn't have to buy any of my GCSE or A level books under Labour. I am in Wales so devolution does play a role here, thankfully.

I still have copies of my books, with my notes from 86-88 on the bookshelf:

Hobsons Choice
Romeo & Juliet
A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

I seem to be missing my War Poets book and one set in Northern Ireland - can’t remember what it was called which will irritate me until I fall asleep!

This is not a new thing.
I am 67, and in the late 1960's I took A Level English Literature. As a group it was decided to study 20th Century literature as we had to buy the books ourselves and it was cheaper to buy those particular books as they were available in paperback.

We brought our English Lit books for O Level in the 80s and annotated them. I still have them around somewhere.

I also probably still have DSs' copies of Romeo and Juliet and of Mice and Men hanging about somewhere too. They aren't ever going to get re-read!

@leghairdontcare

Sadly we all pay for that for you.

Given that those setting the English Literature curriculum in the UK still persist in making educators teach "the classics" generally and not much else at GCSE and 'A' Level, many of these texts are long out of copyright, so, while they might not necessarily be the annotated editions the school recommends, the basic texts are often available quite legally via Gutenberg and some other public domain sites. You can often download a very basic PDF to your Kindle or other ereader.

Other cheap options are abebooks.co.uk (owned by Amazon), Amazon, alibris (primarily still independent booksellers), The Works (who often have editions of classics at knock down prices), Music Magpie, WeBuyBooks, and your local charity shop.

When I was at school studying 'O' levels (yes, I'm that old) the school provided copies of the text for us, but we weren't allowed to annotate them, we actually had to (gasp!) take notes on paper for the relevant themes....

Yes, you will almost certainly be able to borrow the book from your local library, but as a librarian, please, don't annotate them!

@lovelyupnorth people in Wales pay tax too. What do you think is an acceptable use of taxation if not for education?

My place of work offers to buy them back from their students. They won't get all their money back because of the condition, but that is one way of reducing waste and cost.