To wish schools used textbooks.....?

[LyricalBoudicca]

I may be projecting my own issues with reading off a screen all the time, but I'm sure my chidren are missing something by not having a textbook to work from. Everything is a hyperlink to a website, my children get distracted with other things on the laptop, there's sometimes a wifi issue or a submission problem or a formatting issue with a powerpoint they need to do (the worst) The only positive thing is that I don't have to buy bookshelves to stack the multitude of books. AIBU?

Honestly I have been teaching twenty years across two subjects and haven’t so much as seen a textbook since about 2004.

The syllabus has never stayed still long enough, and as pp have suggested, we’re supposed to be innovative as a result.

I would LOVE to teach with “turn to page 53 and answer the questions”. Imagine.

Textbooks are a ridiculous price - the publishers have the monopoly on them (often exam boards only allow one publishing house to sell 'official' textbooks), is the price is heavily controlled. Many are well over £20 each these days and as PP have said, the syllabus tends to change regularly. Schools get a 'discount' but this already built into the price. They don't last, even if they are reasonably well looked after.
It might be possible to buy your own copies (check the syllabus isn't out of date) to be kept at home. Second hand books can be bought a lot cheaper than the new price.

They're expensive and usually hardly ever used, before they become obsolete. Or you cherry pick bits from them, but then carting the damn things round classrooms are a pita.

The best ones tend to be the ones with just extracts of text to use. Finding the extracts is the but that takes time. And spag practice, with loads and loads of examples. I must have written thousands of examples over the years.

What I absolutely hate with a passion is online maths. It discourages doing decent workings out, laid out properly. It may be fine for more able kids with better mental maths etc but I don't think it is suitable otherwise.

Second to that I hate maths worksheets which pretend to have enough space to work out the answers, but don't if your child has large writing or needs interim steps. Again it discourages methodical working.

I include in that maths GCSE papers which again don't allow for larger writing.

I'm in Irish primary we use textbooks. We get a book rental grant from the government and we buy sets. I know every school is different but if they are damaged parents must replace them or else they don't have access to the scheme the following year.
They usually last about 6-8 years and the kids take good care of them.
Parents supplement these with some workbooks that can be written in.
I was berated on here before by teachers for advocating for them but I think they are brilliant. The workload for teachers is reduced as the yearly plans are laid out so we have more time to differentiate appropriately.

That was pretty much my high school experience for most subjects! And lots of group work and projects in English. Fucking group work. I hated it. And no, I didn't need to do it so that I can work on a group as an adult even though I tell kids that in lessons. Working with others as an adult is v different to having to do some work, while the girls on your table just want to talk about boyfriends and why you haven't got one yet.

I've taught supply in quite a few schools in recent years and they've all used textbooks in quite a few subjects (especially MFL and science). They don't get taken home though.

@TeenPlusCat I totally agree re lazy setting of "research xyz in the Internet " hw. Much better fir the teacher to say look at abc website and find the answers to these questions.

Re defacing of books - it totally happens even in the space if a lesson, sadly.

I completely agree.

My son goes to a school where every pupil gets an iPad.
Almost everything lesson is done on it and I don't think they really use textbooks at all, certainly none that come home anyway. He's actually pretty good at maths but never remembers to write the working out and manages to get questions wrong because of it.
I actually think he remembers less about his subjects, purely because everything is now electronic and he never really has to write anything on paper physically. I find the writing of it makes you remember rather than just the reading if that makes sense.

Indeed, I've been saying that for years. The sheer waste/duplication of effort must be enormous. At my son's school, we could see worksheets etc on show my homework for other classes, and different teachers were uploaded their own worksheets for their classes, which were all so similar, but different. I couldn't understand why there wasn't at least "common" worksheets shared within the dept for teachers to use so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel to write their own.

Given the national curriculum, I would have thought it a no brainer for there to be a central bank of worksheets that teachers could download at an appropriate level for their class without having to constantly write their own new ones.

Oh Yes! I remember my son tearing his hair out with online Maths questions. The school used an awful system whereby you had to submit answers to entire sections in one go and if you didn't get all questions right, you had to do the entire section again (different, but similar questions). What an absolute waste of time to have to re-do 9 questions you got right just because you got the 10th wrong. He spent hours on the damn system as he'd often get a different question wrong each time he re-did the section. Apparently the teachers loved it because they had a "dashboard" on screen showing which pupils had completed it, which hadn't, how many attempts they'd taken, etc - and of course they didn't have to mark the answers themselves!

Agreed. I'm trying to minimise screen time and yet this is where the homework is.

Our school keeps textbooks in the classroom. Kids can only use them there and not remove them. It means they’ve kept them for a long time without loss or damage. It was a bit annoying for homework so I bought some duplicates off Amazon.

Where I come from there is no uniform in schools, but everybody has textbooks, from primary. A full set costs you between €150-300 if new, a lot less if second hand / passed down to siblings. It's a comparable cost to uniform, and children learn and study from an actual book. Screens are not used in schools at all (this is a European, developed country) - except IT lessons and the odd interactive board.

If only schools could afford enough textbooks. YANBU.

I've never taught in a school that didn't have textbooks! They are expensive for sure, but they've got their place. I have encountered the prejudice against them of course. I've got a whole shelf at home for different boards, different ones for the same board, extension ones. Doesn't stop me using the internet - but it's very useful to have resources that have been properly edited and have an index.

I had to buy textbooks for my kids doing A-levels - £50 per subject .

Schools don't use them because kids deface them or don't return them.

Dd remembers a maths teacher who had her personal textbook on the table and a boy poured water all over it for a laugh. That's £50 that she spent out of her own wage packet- ruined.

The problems with underfunding happen at primary you. Teachers are using their wages for stuff like glue sticks

I agree with you. This is one of the many reasons we home educate.

Indeed, I've been saying that for years. The sheer waste/duplication of effort must be enormous. At my son's school, we could see worksheets etc on show my homework for other classes, and different teachers were uploaded their own worksheets for their classes, which were all so similar, but different. I couldn't understand why there wasn't at least "common" worksheets shared within the dept for teachers to use so they didn't have to reinvent the wheel to write their own.

Given the national curriculum, I would have thought it a no brainer for there to be a central bank of worksheets that teachers could download at an appropriate level for their class without having to constantly write their own new ones.

How do you know they were their own worksheets that they'd actually created though? Or, if they were, they might have created them years ago and used rhem umpteen times. There are gazillions of worksheets available online on every subject, lots of them quite similar. Sometimes you use them exactly as they come, sometimes you tweak them slightly. You don't need a department bank of set worksheets, powerpoints etc if you have a much wider range available at the click of a mouse.