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.

The big mistake you are making gruach is blithely assuming the textbooks are written by experts.

The ones that are available are sponsored by exam boards and generally rushed out. They are muddled and muddling.

I find DS's Spanish A level textbook bewildering in its layout and design.

They also -lots of them - limit book based content in order to get you to sign up online/buy a DVD with more material. It's all about touting for business, not the joy of learning.

Does HE really still sue lots of books itself? I would imagine much academic research is done online ,too?

I am definitely a fan of the printed word and hate loads of worksheets and screen learning. But no school of any size could ever provide a textbook for every child in every subject. We have just been given £1000 to buy some textbooks. That will buy maybe 40 books.

Yes ... I must admit I wasn't familiar with the sponsored by exam boards element. Sounds utterly senseless.

This is the problem when exam boards are profit making and run by publishing houses!

We have a "National" Curriculum (I say national in quotation marks, as I am fully aware it is England only!!!); there should be one exam board, part of the DfE, and then publishing houses would be falling over themselves to produce high quality textbooks because they'd be competing for schools' business.
And at a time when all GCSE and A levels have been reformed, I would imagine they would still be making huge amounts of money.

As an aside, irvine- maths may not have changed much over the last 40 400 years, but the methods my DC have learnt in primary have been completely different to those that DH and I learnt 35 years ago.

MsAwesomeDragon are your Maths books from the 90s these ones? That’s what I used at school and we’ve got some in our store cupboard too. Not sure if anyone actually uses them but no one wants to throw them away because they were brilliant.

Noble summed it up brilliantly, as always. Unfortunately she isn't schools minister and Nick Gibb is an idiot. Textbooks would be great if it meant more money for schools and education secretaries keeping their sticky fingers off the curriculum for more than two years!
But if there were great textbooks I bet we'd have an education secretary saying "there you go! Anyone can teach. It doesn't need qualified teachers. You just need the textbook!" Sigh.

When I first started teaching in 2004 the school used 1994 copies of Chemistry for You. All students were given a copy, returned at the end of GCSE.

In 2006 the new 'Core Science' came out. The school bought enough syllabus-specific textbooks for each student in the year. They were truly crap books. They were published in a hurry (syllabus wasn't finalised until May/June with first teaching in September) and were full of errors. For example, it gave the product at the anode in the electrolysis of sodium chloride as oxygen.

Syllabus changed again in 2011, but there was no money for new textbooks.

Syllabus changed again in 2016, but no money for new textbooks. The 2006 ones have been condemned (rightfully so), so the only ones we can use are the 1994 ones.

The AQA specification includes guidelines schemes of work. For one of the topics, virtually every lesson's suggested activities include 'students research into......' How on earth can you do that without textbooks or without enough computer facilities for every timetabled class to have access each lesson?

There isn't enough money in the budget to service the fume cupboards or have the mass balances properly calibrated. Where is the money for new textbooks supposed to come from?

Some excellent points being made here:

Foxjar - You are absolutely right, in place of textbooks there may be online resources, but how to stop your teenager playing games online when you think they are working.

Fffion - you are the lucky exception if you have all textbooks in your state school. We would all "like" that but many teachers don't have the option - there are just no textbooks in most schools, running hand in hand with no money.

Burntheblacksuite - shiny new textbooks on open day - Kitty is probably correct - they may well have been on trial from the publisher. Did you have a close look at them - were they the correct KS for your child's year? The new GCSE ones are all shiny - when you can get your hands on them.

Soursprout - your child is being shortchanged. CGP 9-1 are great revision guides but they are not textbooks. Your school must be extremely short of money.

Everytime ref - no textbooks and no photocopying - are you at my DC's grammar? No art resources (despite parents being asked to pay for them), no equipment for experiments, no heating, no loo paper (we took our own), no soap, no new library books, hardly any old library books, cheaper NQT teachers and the list goes on and on and on ...

So, Mr Gibb - we'd all love new textbooks for our DCs. What will schools buy them with? Money they should be using for gas and electric?

So has any one mentioned e-readers and electronic text books. I can see them being a lot cheaper than a full set of paper text books for a dozen subjects, they can easily updated with any changes to the curriculum and they can be reused for several years. Schools would also save by getting rid of paper handouts, homework diaries etc.

Julie - as long as each child has easy access to electronic equipment at school and at home. No computers in my DCs grammar school either - at least not ones that worked. A couple of their friends had no pc at home. You'd need major new investment to allow daily access to technology for each child at each school.

Back to Nick Gibb's speech - "Leading academies and free schools show what it is possible to achieve. They provide an evidence base for other schools to learn from."
Er, ... not according to a broadsheet today Nick - "64 academy schools are waiting to find a new sponsor after being abandoned by, or stripped from the trust originally managing them." That's roughly 40,000 students Nick. You didn't tell us that fact, it took a Freedom of Information request to get it.
40,000 - I wonder if they have textbooks?

Just had a look in my DCs school drawer and a full set of AQA third edition 2016 (9-1) GCSE Biology, Chemistry and Physics text books RRP £20 each. There is a text book for Computer science, Geography, poetry anthologies, Macbeth, Lord of the flies, revision books and guides etc. I expect they have to be returned at the end of Y11.

There is hundreds of pounds of books in there and the school is definitely not flush. Are they all no good? Must be cheaper to ditch them all and replace with one e-reader.

I think your DD's must be the only school in the country to give out all this stuff!!

The issue with e readers as far as English goes is annotation and , for other subjects, loss of key diagrams and pictures . Then there's the fact that schools don't have e Readers!

As far as home goes, the choice is yours, of course.

Digital textbooks aren't free either.

Why would any resources be free?

Astronotus - can only speak for DCs school but internet access is already required by all pupils at home, as many programs are used that are needed.

Any child without access can get help from the school in the computer suite, after school, to access everything needed. But apparently there isn't a single pupil in DCs year groups that doesn't have internet access at home.

Apparently when the school bought the paper text books they come with an electronic version. But we have never bothered registering for access to that, so I dont know how easy it is to use.

You'd need major new investment to allow daily access to technology for each child at each school e-readers are very cheap and I imagine could be given away free by some companies if bought with a text book contract.

The issue with e readers as far as English goes is annotation and , for other subjects, loss of key diagrams and pictures
Modern e-readers can show pictures and also can be annotated.

Some schools are moving towards the e-reader option. Several schools I have been in have the iPad/tablet for every pupil policy (with mixed results, some schools succeeding with this and others it being a disaster).

I think only new free schools or those that have expanded greatly with cash injections have the lump sum cash required to go to paperless or near paperless for textbooks though.

Trouble with a lot of online text books is that they're just images of the paper version. Eg each page is portrait, but your laptop screen is landscape, so you either have it so small you can barely read it or have to keep scrolling around. Another problem is that text books use a 2 page spread, i.e. picture on one page, explanation/key on the other, which is fine if you have a book open, but if you're on a screen, you have to flick forward and back. My son's school give online access, but he finds it a real pain to try to view on screen and prefers paper text books.

What is needed are proper "e-books", i.e. with hyperlinks, interactivity, etc. The BBC bytesize website is actually good in that it has inbuilt tests, videos, etc., - that's the format needed if e-books are ever going to be useful for school pupils.

noble, have you seen the Pearson maths text books. I really like the KS3 ones and the way you can choose the strengthen or extend sections. The GCSE one is a bit big and heavy for a paperback - can't see it lasting too well and I'm not sure the "teaching" bits in it are laid out as well as at KS3 but it still has lots of practice and then strengthen or extension sections. It seems well matched to the new GCSE too.

Julie 8008 - love the sound of your school. Facilities sound indie level or you have the most well run state school in the uk! Could be a free school, of course? Presumably in an affluent area though as not every child at my DC's school had internet access at home. My DC's school said they would not buying the extra online books if they did manage to scrap together money for a textbook between 3 for GCSE level !

educating not seen any maths textbooks recently, we definitely can't afford them!

I have a dc in Y7 at a prep school, preparing for common entrance at the end of Y8. The syllabus changes a little slower than a container ship in frozen treacle, so the textbooks don’t go out of date. DC has excellent textbooks, from which he enjoys learning. I have 2 DC in state school. For Ofsted reasons, it seems to be preferable for teachers to personally create each lesson from scratch rather than use textbooks which already have expertly assessed material therein. And the school couldn’t afford them - it can barely afford readers for KS1

The other thing about e readers is they haven't taken off . Kids don't like them. they want to use highlighters and physically use them. There is an online version of the poetry anthology provided by AQA and all the set texts. Not one child in my class last year accessed it. One of the issues was incredibly convoluted sign up and log in procedures.

But, anyway, the fact of the matter is many children don't learn well from screens for a whole host of reasons and there really really aren't schools stuffed full of ipads and Kindles (not even laptops or PCs!)

In my last school there were precisely one class set of each textbook to be used in emergencies only - such as unexpected illness where the teacher was actually too ill to set "proper" cover. I actually had hidden in some of my cupboards a set of the Chemistry for you, and same for physics and biology, which I surreptitiously used as they were brilliant. Clear concise illustrations and diagrams, increasingly difficult/probing questions. Just all round good and reliable.
They got binned during a refurbishment one summer. I was so upset.
Textbooks definitely have their place. I never understood why they were anathema!

I think the e readers only work in schools where it is part and parcel of the lessons too, the ones where the lessons powerpoints and homework is all available and where the books are automatically uploaded to the tablet or available through an app on there with no convoluted login processes.

Universities seem to be going to the e book subscription route, so I wonder if it will filter down in time?

I have only seen one primary school embracing e readers (using the bug club portal so you got the correct book band books for learning to read) but some secondaries seem quite committed to it.

I found the policy paper from 2014 interesting, particularly when it states that some schools arent willing to pay for books but are willing to double enter students for GCSEs

www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/images/181744-why-textbooks-count-tim-oates.pdf