Nick Gibb calls for a teacher-led return to textbooks

[noblegiraffe]

Nick Gibb, Schools Minister said a couple of days ago at a panel discussion led by think tank Policy Exchange that 'The teacher-led move back to textbooks will be integral to ensuring that the national curriculum is as effective as we’d hoped.'

Nick Gibb needs to explain where the money for these textbooks will be coming from, because my department certainly hasn't got any.

Nick Gibb also needs to explain how schools can be certain that any textbooks published won't be a waste of money because they will be obsolete within a year due to another set of curriculum changes.

In addition, Nick Gibb needs to explain how we can purchase quality textbooks when all the textbook currently available are crap because they have been rushed out to the timeline of incredibly rapid curriculum change.

Nick Gibb finally needs to explain why we've been told for years by organisations such as Ofsted that textbooks are lazy teaching, have no place in the classroom and so on.

But sure, it's down to teachers to make textbooks a thing again.

CarrieBlue, in my country, text books needed to be paid in senior school.(16+, up to then, it's paid by the government.)
I also grew up partially in US, which we needed to hand back the text books in reasonable condition at the end of the year, or you get charged for it.

We had an expensive Ofsted inspector being paid as a consultant come to my school a few years ago and tell me that if I was regularly using textbooks then I needed to examine my teaching practice.

I'm a maths teacher.

Incidentally, I'm a big fan of textbooks, but I'm not a fan of crap textbooks. I regularly use the textbooks I was using when I first came into teaching 12 years ago. We've had two new sets of GCSE textbooks since then and neither of them are as good. We don't have a set for the new GCSE and it is a problem as the old ones don't have the new topics, nor do they have enough problem-solving or really hard questions.

I love a good textbook lesson.
And surprisingly many of the kids do too.
But yes, slt would not approve and I'd fail my qa and be in for a load more stress than I need if I started teaching from them regularly.
Also our new textbooks are total shit written by people who have no subject knowledge at all it seems.
Fuck off gibb.

There was some report recently on, I think, The One Show which revealed the number of mistakes in maths textbooks!

The new GCSE textbook for film studies certainly ahs quite a lot of mistakes in it , and advice about answering questions which contradicts exam board advice. It is also £40.

The A level textbook is not out yet and no sign of it. Maybe Gibbsy could hurry it along.

I have textbooks. I've used textbooks in almost all my observed lessons for the past 10 years, and it has been fine (sometimes good, sometimes outstanding). We sacrificed our photocopying budget in order to buy textbooks for GCSE (2 years in a row because we could only afford one yeargroup at a time), and the new ones for the A level (which are not great as they just don't have enough questions on each topic). We can't let the kids take them home because we only have enough for one between two.

I have a lot of textbooks in my classroom. Some are new, some are old (some were published in the 90s, I was using them when I was doing GCSE). Almost everything I want to teach is in one of those textbooks to be found, and I am encouraged to use them in most lessons.

We haven't had Ofsted for a while though, so they might not approve of my use of textbooks. I won't be changing my normal practice, but I might change things a bit if Ofsted suddenly arrive.

I don't use textbooks much at KS3 because unfortunately years ago when we had money to buy KS3 textbooks we bought Formula One ones. There was a fad at the time that said in maths kids didn't need to do loads of questions, but merely a handful of questions on a topic and then they'd know how to do it. Each topic only has 3-4 questions so by the time you've got the textbooks handed out, some of the kids have finished and are asking what to do next
I like a worksheet that has hundreds of questions getting progressively harder, like Ten Ticks.

My last school had formula one books, and I agree they are dire. Fortunately, my current school have rather more sensible ideas about textbooks, so we have textbooks with lots of questions which get harder throughout the exercise.

We have quite a historical record of maths textbooks in our store cupboards. Enough that when another local school was flooded and lost all their maths textbooks we managed to give them enough that they had a textbook for each class (possibly not the textbooks they would have chosen, but acceptable for teaching with until the insurance money came through), and STILL our cupboards are overflowing with old textbooks.

I was an EAL student in US at grade7. Text book was god send for me, because I didn't understand what teacher was saying, but I was able to work out the text book at home and in class. I still remember Algebra1 text book with lots of past user's name written on it, and loved going through it because it was only thing that made sense back then for me.

I'd like Nick Gibb to be an effective local MP. That would be a start.

I've just read Nick Gibb's speech to the centre right Policy Exchange. I think maybe my DCs are being educated in a parallel universe somewhere. Re textbooks, they were invisible at my DC's grammar. We would have loved them. Except one big problem - absolutely no money whatsoever for textbooks nor anything else. Opps, no, in RS there were ancient ones, one between 3 students! If Mr Gibb wants schools to buy textbooks he will have to given them the money, extra money and do so in good time so they can plan and budget accordingly. Newly published textbooks can be bought by schools with discounts of up to 50%/30% for an early order deadline. But forward budgeting won't be possible, as noble says, with the education dept revolving door as there are always new ministers with new and different ideas. Why worry about children's education when you've just got the plummiest job of your career and you want to make a big noise.

Just another sticking plaster idea to cover the cracks and gaping holes in funding for schools.

My dcs don't have any textbooks at their grammars. They have battered homemade second hand books made from sheets if they're lucky. Nearly all homework takes the form of screenshots from phones or online. Just had to buy the CPG workbook series for science homework as requested by school. Slightly miffed as we in reality own the books which we couldn't really afford. Ds has a test to revise for but they're being marked so can't be used for revision. Not happy with all the online homework as teenage screen time is a nightmare to police as it is. Can't really take screens away when they need them for homework.
That said I'm not really sure what schools are supposed todo as ours are broke. There is zero money. Perhaps the gov would like to give some extra money for the books they desire.

I don't understand what you are saying about the lack of text books. When we looked round secondary schools as prospective parents, they all had piles of shiny new exciting textbooks on show. Do they really not use them? They looked lovely and so engaging. I wanted to read them and learn!

Goodness this is an extraordinary discussion. And not being a teacher I hardly know where to begin.

All I know is I'm spending a lot of time atm talking to a child in their GCSE year about university choice and applications. They have a reasonable expectation of (shorthand) a Russell group or possibly Oxbridge for a 'traditional' subject. We've talked about supervisions/tutorials, one to one teaching, lectures and seminars. For all of these they will be expected to read books. At their school they use a mixture of textbooks and printed sheets - but are expected to make full use of the school libraries and read around subjects using mainstream academic works. So the leap to university shouldn't be too painful.

But how on earth do school leavers who use mainly worksheets manage the transition to traditional academic study?

I can't even articulate my confusion over the acceptance that learning is no longer centred on books written by experts on a topic ...

Wow where is your school?

I am waiting to see with interest how DD will learn, and be able to revise, when she starts secondary.

I can't imagine how you build up a useful background knowledge of the subject if you just have a collection of random worksheets - that will presumably get lost.

I guess students in poorer countries must manage later at uni but we're not a poor country. It's so wrong.Local libraries and school libraries are being run diwn, many schools are struggling to buy books and other basic stationary.....

My kids have always had textbooks in every subject. I don’t get what’s not to like.

It’s like the blind leading the blind. You can’t demand teachers use textbooks on one hand and then fail them in an observation for using textbooks too much and take away their budgets for it, with the other. It’s crazy!

Teachers have been saying for years that there is definitely a place for using textbooks but we have been forced to do all singing and all dancing ‘performances’ to keep engaged the Social Media generation that I’m not surprised we have come full circle with an initiative that we knew would come around.

Wish people could just leave us to teach sometimes!

When we looked round secondary schools as prospective parents, they all had piles of shiny new exciting textbooks on show.

Don’t underestimate the power of trying to ‘wow’ at an open morning/evening....

We are able to have new samples from publishers to ‘trial’ and we normally show these at open evenings but we don’t have nearly enough for our students.

We dont have textbook and arent allowed to photocopy worksheets at my school.

Y'know Foxjar I was about to laugh off your first question (because my answer would be highly annoying) but what you say about poorer countries puts things in a different context.

I'll tell you a story. Early 1950s - one of those places the UK would call a 'poorer country' (having stripped it of human and natural resorces). Relative of mine living there, ambitious, studied A' levels by correspondence from London. There was one particular textbook he was particularly fond of ... He used to take it down from the shelf in his study and turn over the pages while recalling his time as the London university student he eventually became. And eventually I went to university myself, to read a subject that overlapped with his. So I used the same textbook - updated by my Director of Studies.

Poorer countries ime absolutely venerate book based learning. I've read what the OP says about lack of money available - but I honestly can't see how this isn't a matter of ideology rather than pure economics. To go back to 'where's your school?' - I strongly suspect that successive recent governments - with their own children in well funded, book rich schools like the one I spoke of - don't give a toss about the academic aspirations of the rest of society. That's why there are no books.

(I can spell resources. Just rubbish at proofreading.)