Why on earth aren't subject text books plugged more???

[pgtips2]

Nowadays, it seems everything is either on a screen or a booklet or a crumpled bit of work sheet copied to death.

When I quizzed my youngest they said they'd never even looked in the text book! They're lucky to have them both as print and online copies but I was aghast.

These are books which are basically either written or used for the GCSE curriculum/exam board they're sitting.

Surely, the first point of call should be - after the teaching / lesson - to look at the chapter and then make sure you do the end-of-chapter/topic tests.

But instead my kids use various online resources - which although great resources such as Save my exams and PMT, surely should be the follow on rather than the source - it just seems strange NOT to start with the book.

I think using a book as a basis provides more of a structure in your mind of the topics covered and you can sort of remember almost - after a while - where a specific explanation or question is. I should think much better for kids/boys with slight ADHD issues (suspicion here).

Thoughts please!!

@Newlittlerescue

One thing to make him more organised that is simple is to date every piece of paper, whether it is a handout, page from a notebook, diagram etc etc.

As well as the date number them in the order they are given.

If he can refer to it in his notes even better.

Even better than that if he can use a different colour of ink for the dating and numbering so red - maths, blue - history, green - geography.

I'm not sure you can plead cost now tbh. A pp noted charity shops don't want used copies of revision notes, but they always have heaps of Eng Lit books. I've found a load of books and revision guides on World of Books. Couple of quid each and in A1 condition.

DD didn't need any books for uni. All accessed on huge digital libraries. She did buy a couple for annotation, as that is how she was taught, but 90% was online.

Ah @merrymelodies the good old days. More eco than the supposedly more eco c21st.

Suspect your school had more admin resource though. And more dosh.

I think schools still do this. We had an email requesting used revision guides for the book room.

Thank you! This is an excellent suggestion.

This 100%

At our (admittedly indie) school you get charged if you don't return the book. I get that education in the state sector should be free but perhaps a charge for lost books should be an option. There will be lots of schools where parents would be able to afford that if they can't ensure the books are returned.

The problem is at our school, these text books don't seem to be used. I get that teachers want students to achieve their best and so 'cherry pick' using handouts. But you can still do that by focusing on certain sections of the text book, supplemented if needed by handouts.

No wonder our young people's brains are fried and so much mental health. All the various online resources you have to remember and various bits of handouts to file away.

I think for most people, having a source like a textbook gives real structure to your learning. A pathway. I remember when younger that with a textbook, at the end of the academic year you almost had a 'feel' for where certain subtopics would be found and gave it coherence and a place for your memory to be grounded.

I'm actually shocked to learn that new teachers have been told that Ofsted wouldn't take kindly to lessons based on text books. Madness!

And, as someone else said, plenty of countries where text books are used.

Another issue is it's not uncommon for state schools to have no lockers for students. My students struggle as it is to carry all their exercise books, PE kit, lunch, coat etc. No way could I get them to bring books.

I think you are living in a different world to the average state comp tbh.

We can't afford dividers for 6th form this year!

Yep, I feel for you. When it was me decades ago, I NEEDED structure and needed to know what was coming next, etc. I loved the subjects where we had textbooks and would work through them diligently. I liked being able to "read the next chapter" to give me an overview of the next lesson and found I absorbed far more information in class with the teacher explaining things that I'd already briefly read about but not particularly understood!

I absolutely detested the subjects where teachers just produced random worksheets etc, seemingly in no particular order, even more so when I missed a lesson and would struggle as inevitably none of my classmates would have taken a spare for me, and by the next lesson, the teacher wouldn't have brought "last lesson's" worksheets, so I'd lose that forever. It was never easy asking to borrow someone else's book to copy the work done as they'd usually need it for their homework etc.

I'd hoped it would be better today with the homework apps and school portals for my DS, and naively expected the worksheets etc to be uploaded for future reference or for absent pupils to catch up. How naive I was. Some teachers would do it, but most didn't, so he struggled in the same way I did decades earlier after missing a lesson. The homework system would typically say something like "complete the worksheet handed out in class!" Very helpful (not) - it would take a few seconds for the teacher to actually upload the worksheet! Even easier would be for them to say homework is the questions on page 75 of the textbook!

@Badbadbunny Absolutely this. And your comment about the option to 'read ahead' really resonates. Especially as learning and memory research show exactly this, that having read something, even if you didn't understand it all, provides a initial framework that helps slot the info that the teacher then shares in the lesson.

CGP Books are usually pretty good, and usually do different versions for different exam boards. They're not traditional style "text" books, but I think 3 different types, two being "revision" style books, and one purely exam question style book. The two revisions are different, one thicker than the other which goes into more detail, (similar to a text book but less wordy!), and the other a summary revision book just with the basics. We got them for most subjects for our son's GCSEs and A levels and he found them far better than the "wordy" textbooks or the scrappy worksheets when it came to revising for end of topic tests and the exams. There's pretty cheap new on Amazon, or you can usually find second hand ones on Ebay for next to nothing, usually something like a pound or two plus postage. As I say, just check you get the ones for the right exam boards.

Yeah - iirc we did try and charge for missing books, but they just didn't pay up and really what could we do if they didn't? Nothing, and they knew it. A text book (a decent one - but that's a different thread) would have made my life so much easier believe me.

To be fair though, I found the biggest drawback was that there would be a large number of kids who just didn't bother to bring their book (in fact many of them didn't even bother to bring a bag or a pen or their exercise book either). So you ended up with kids having to share (and the ones who had brought their books being understandably annoyed), So then you found yourself photocopying the relevant pages before the lesson anyway. We really tried to make these books work, but we felt foiled at every turn.

I retired from secondary teaching in 2013, but well before that the edict came from senior leadership that we shouldn't be using textbooks, but making our own resources, as relying on textbooks encouraged lazy teaching, Ofsted wouldn't like it and so on.
In reality, it was probably to save money.
The result was generally a mess. A good textbook is an invaluable resource for both teachers and students. It frees up time and headspace to supplement it creatively with additional activities and resources suitable for the individual or the class, and it's useful if a student is off school for whatever reason.

In the UK, it is considered lazy teaching to use text books. Random Internet websites are considered fine, even though they are not reviewed or checked. As a maths teacher, we printed endless worksheets which the students often lost.

I really believe it's led by a philosophical movement rather than costs. Lessons are "supposed" to be engaging which can quite often be ask singing all dancing to the point of feeling over stimulating!

Even if the scrappy worksheets were printed and bound in a course handbook it would be better and more logical.

I think we are really failing children, the inability to search contents/index pages to understand alphabetical order, to understand filling systems (both physical and online) means it's hard to pin new knowledge into any kind of scaffold to help retain memory.

Agree.

Imagine the time cost of sourcing a schools worth of books like this though.

Plus most of the books are out of date, curricula and specs change so often.

Textbooks in the U.K. are not good textbooks. This is (mostly) why ofsted in general don't like to see teachers teaching from them.

There are a number of reasons for this.

In some countries like China or Japan, there is a national curriculum. Every child in year 8 in the third Monday in September will be doing exactly the same lesson from exactly the same textbook. China has recently liberalised a bit and there are now three permitted textbooks for maths.

The U.K. does have a national curriculum but most schools are opted out. In the last school I worked in, we wrote our own curriculum. This causes its own problems for textbooks - we studied empires and colonialism in year 8 history but that was our own unit that we wrote. It didn't have a textbook because why would anybody write a textbook for one school?

Most schools now have their own curriculum. So in years 7,8 and 9 textbooks just can't exist. Schools study different books and poems in English, completely different periods in history. Even in things like French or maths, the fact topics come in different orders is a problem.

I worked as a maths adviser to schools in my area. One topic, like straight lines, could be almost anywhere in ks3. One school would have it in year 7, and other school would do it at the end of year 9. How can the publishers write textbooks for a situation like this? They can't - or at least not good ones.

The best they can do at ks3 is ks3 revision guides - and this works for maths and French abs (mostly) science but not at all for English or History.

The same applies at gcse. Some GCSEs are just too small for it to profitable to write a textbook so none even exists.
Some like history have so many options (history of medicine, nazis etc) that you have to write a textbook per option and the school or the kid has to buy 4.

Others like maths have so much content that the textbooks come in two or three flavours - higher maths and foundation maths. But the foundation maths textbooks are usually too hard for the foundation kids who often can't read.

In other countries the government subsidises textbooks and encourages schools to use them. Textbooks are not subsidized in this country.

I used to really enjoy using text books at school - it meant I could just get on with it without waiting round for class to start/for other people to stop talking. It also meant if I knew the stuff that was in the text book I could be confident that I'd be well prepared for the exam.

My kids have just started year 7. This thread has been an absolute eye opener for me. I had no idea textbooks weren't used. The kids were issued with an iPad each. All homework, their timetable, attendance record etc ... It's all on there.
I don't know how to help my children learn. The structure of following a textbook just makes sense. You can even read a bit in bed if you want. They won't be taking their iPads to bed!

I've just done a course for work and it was all delivered remotely so after the Teams seminar I had a pdf copy of the material. It is so hard to read online, I just don't absorb it the same as sitting with a book, highlighting, annotating or making notes. But we can't print everything off!

I just doesn't seem like the technology is a step forward in this case.

My eldest child attends a specialist independent school. I figured he didn't use textbooks because his rigid thinking prohibits any home study anyway and he has a hard line between home and school.
What we did find during COVID and home schooling was a company called Oaka Books who produce learning materials for kids with SEN such as ADHD and dyslexia. The materials are focused, simplified and just super clear. I think I'll be using these to help my younger kids as well as buying textbooks to support their learning.
So just in case it helps someone else their site is https://www.oakabooks.co.uk/

My son has started A Levels this year and buying the text books and set texts (for English lit) is not optional. I've spent somewhere over £300 on books this summer. It's a selective state school.

We weren't asked to buy any books at his previous school for GCSE, although we did buy the set texts for English lit so that he could annotate them.

My DD is doing Biology, Chemistry, Maths, and Further Maths at A-levels. Her school (state comprehensive) said they weren't required to buy text books, but some teachers gave them the titles to buy, if students requested it. We bought them all - it isn't a small amount but it's worth it. It's a mix of CGP Books, Hodder Education, and Oxford.

In year 11 for GCSE revision the text books were vital as my DD is rubbish with organising notes. They are not only guiding revision, but they are full of exam style questions as well.

DD didn't even touch any of her classroom notes and sheets. She used the text books to revise and practice questions, then she moved on to test herself using past papers and online tools such as Seneca, drfrostmaths, and Cognito. If she didn't know a topic, she went back to the text books. She did make some flashcards mostly for biology and chemistry, to help her memorize topics she found stuffy / harder to remember.

@NCfor24

I've just done a course for work and it was all delivered remotely so after the Teams seminar I had a pdf copy of the material. It is so hard to read online, I just don't absorb it the same as sitting with a book, highlighting, annotating or making notes. But we can't print everything off!

We bought books for our DS throughout his GCSE and A level years even though school didn't "require" them. Even where they were using books in school (not allowed home), he still preferred to have the same book at home for him to read all the bits they weren't doing in school and especially for revision.

When he went to Uni, all the lecture notes, practice questions, etc are on line - completely "paper free". It lasted only for the first term with him as he absolutely hated it. To "revise", he found himself writing out the notes from the screen onto paper so it took massive amounts of time! That was despite him being tech savvy and knowing how to annotate and highlight online pdfs. He just couldn't "learn" from a screen.

From the first Christmas onwards, he printed it all out and made his own folders for each module. He'd take the printed notes to lectures, seminars, tutorials, etc and make his own hand written notes on the pages. He did it in such a way, i.e. tabs, colour codings, page numbers and indexing, etc., that he was creating his revision materials as he went along. His second term of exams went far better as he wasted far less time on re-inventing the wheel, and could go straight to the relevant paper page via the tabs and index, so his revision was quicker and more effective.

He carried on doing that throughout the second and third years. Yes, he used a lot of paper and it cost him a fair bit in printing costs at something like 5p per sheet and some lecture notes ran to a couple of hundred pages per module, but he thought it well worth it, and it worked for him. Really funny really as in everything else in his life, he does it all on a screen, but when it comes to studying, he prefers paper.

Now he's studying professional exams and strangely enough, for each exam, he gets a box load of "paper" being a text/study book, revision books, practice papers book and revision cards. It's all online too, but he still far prefers doing it on paper. It seems that the "professional" study firms still find there's a demand for paper versions rather than school/Uni who clearly prefer online.

The school where I work does use text books for some subjects (especially sciences, but also Eng Lit, history and a few others), but they are not to be removed from the classroom. We bought duplicate textbooks for my DC because they "think in ink" and find it harder to recall or locate information on a website (and so they could annotate), but many families wouldn't be able to afford this. Teachers like Seneca etc because they can see whether or not each student has logged in, what they found difficult etc, but I do sometimes feel that it's at the expense of better organisation, structure and learning from textbooks.