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.

noble I think there's a copy of those somewhere amongst our treasury of textbooks through the ages, and I certainly used SMP when I was at school, although ours was a collection of booklets that we all worked through at our own pace when "individual learning" was all the rage. Unsurprising, that didn't work too well for many pupils, so we moved to whole class teaching for GCSE. Using these textbooks, which are the ones still on my bookshelf. They're actually very good, and have plenty of tricky problem solving questions in, but don't cover all the new topics in the GCSE, and the kids laugh at the decades of past pupils and ancient graffiti written in them.

I have not come across any Maths textbook that even comes close to Modern Mathematics for Schools (Scottish Mathematics Group).

In my local primary school the PTA had to buy the e readers and they are only used for certain lessons.

I honestly can't see how this isn't a matter of ideology rather than pure economics.

Indeed. I've seen a number of teachers report over the years that using textbooks was denigrated during their teacher training (ITT), as lacking creativity, being lazy, being poor practice, etc. See, for example, three teachers on this thread:

twitter.com/RufusWilliam/status/936978247119712256

A further advantage of having pupils read well-written 'old-fashioned' type textbooks is that they familiarise them with an academic writing style, as opposed to the diet of pure fiction that constitutes the majority of children's reading.

I have never understood how children are suddenly expected to write academic essays in Year 9 or 10, having never read anything written in that style. Textbooks for the humanities, in particular, make extensive use of academic vocabulary, transition techniques, varying types of topic sentences, etc. They also provide examples of how to structure arguments relating to cause and effect, for example, and how to deal successfully with a number of points while giving appropriate weight to each.

Pupils who have had the benefit of being exposed regularly to this will
be hugely advantaged over those whose experience of learning academic writing skills consists mainly of being told to write in a 'PEE' style

Bizarrely, at parents' evening last week for Y8 DS, his maths teacher recommended getting the AQA GCSE maths book. It's got mixed reviews on Amazon. Also, isn't there a KS3 maths book?! I know our school has a 3-year KS4 for maths and science but this seemed a tad premature!
Very sad to see how our eyes lit up at an actual textbook, though!

I have not read the whole thread, but I cannot understand why, rather than books, the information which is needed for the curriculum is not put into a computer site. Programmes can be easily changed with the latest whim of the education minister. Every school aged child could be given free access thus levelling the playing field a little. Information can be in moving diagrams or videos.

Not since the printing press has there been such a revolution in information technology. In education we need to move on from illumined manuscripts.

I cannot understand why, rather than books, the information which is needed for the curriculum is not put into a computer site.

This is what I can't understand. There seems to be thousands of teachers all re-inventing the wheel by writing their own worksheets and lesson plans. Why isn't there a central database? We clearly have massive waste issues re out of date textbooks and quality issues? Online resources, both for teachers and pupils seems to be an obvious answer, which yes, could quickly/easily be updated when the syllabus changes. It could also include automatic marking i.e. by use of multiple choice questions, and numeric answers for relevant subjects. Yes, the cost would be enormous, but surely less over a period of time than individual schools buying textbooks and it would answer the teachers' complaints of time shortages.

I cannot understand why, rather than books, the information which is needed for the curriculum is not put into a computer site.

This is where the ideologies of conservative ministers and the progressive education establishment are in agreement, although for different reasons. The conservatives believe in competing marketplace driving up standards; and the education establishment resists the idea for the same reason that they resist the idea of government approved textbooks: they want to limit the power of government to control the curriculum at that level of detail, particularly for the humanities like history or English.

There seems to be thousands of teachers all re-inventing the wheel by writing their own worksheets and lesson plans

Many teachers have been told during their training that this is the most important aspect of teaching: using their creativity to design their own lessons.{see my post with the link above] And of course to some extent that is necessary, given the differences between classes. Also, there are big disagreements across the profession on HOW the curriculum should be delivered: should children be receiving explicit instruction and practice or should they be "discovering" things on their own? These disagreements would make centralised lesson plans very difficult, and they would be seen as dictatorial. Plenty of teachers even object to being told to teach reading via synthetic phonics, despite all the evidence in its favour.

i.e. by use of multiple choice questions

Multiple choice questions have been a huge no-no for the education establishment, for a number of years. Not allowing sufficient scope for creativity, just testing regurgitation of facts rather than understanding, etc etc. Never mind that they can be useful in many [not all] circumstances, and if carefully designed can tell a teacher a lot about what pupils' misconceptions are. They represent everything that progressive educators are against, and would be frowned on heavily in many schools.

Why isn't there a central database?

Because there would be an absolute uproar if the government provided for free what lots of companies are charging money for.

In maths at least there are several companies charging for digital textbooks, many companies charging for online worksheets and lots of expensive options for interactive self-marking quizzes.

There’s also loads of free stuff, some of excellent quality, some not, and it takes time to trawl through.

Remember when Gove wanted to get rid of competing exam boards and just have one supplier per subject? Yeah, that didn’t happen. And if anyone could have pushed it through, it would have been him.

Why isn't there a central database?
What about a private company providing a 'central database' for teachers to upload educational content, which can then be downloaded by schools for free. The creators are then paid for their work based on number of likes downloads. A bit like youtube for education material (so not just videos).

What about a private company providing a 'central database' for teachers to upload educational content,

I think that it may happen without business/govt involvement. I've found Facebook pages where teachers are freely sharing resources, one of which has hundreds of worksheets/PP presentations freely available for download and that's just for a single GCSE subject for just one exam board. Add to that all the free youtube tutorials. The educational businesses may well be on their way out anyway unless they can find a business model to compete.

You mean like TES resources?

You mean like TES resources?

If it can find a way to be financially feasible on a free to access basis (which it isn't at the moment) and find a way to get more users active to enable confidence in the material.

TES resources are free. Or at least the ones I download are. I automatically ignore any paid-for ones, but generally, there isn't a shortage of maths worksheets out there on the internet.

The difference between textbooks and a worksheet though is that the textbook could be used to teach yourself a particular course. Teachers just tend to use them for the questions though, and kids at maths A-level don't have the faintest idea how to use them to learn from.

TES resources are free

I see some are, I looked up 'maths GCSE' resources and on the first page 4 are free but 17 aren't. And there doesn't seem to many teachers giving feedback, which must be crucial to know if anything worth buying. Is it just in its infancy, or do not very many teachers use it?

That's not how you search for resources though. You go on google and type 'solving algebraic fractions worksheet' et voila, a whole page of them. Or you put TES in your search term to get TES ones.

Or you go on the resourceaholic website and browse her stuff. Or Piximaths.

I've never been even remotely tempted to buy anything from the TES when there's so much out there for free.

ok consider me out of my depth.

My DC are in independent schools and textbooks are going strong there. I don't get the impression that there is a lack of creativity in those classrooms and all the modern ways of teaching and pupil based stuff seem to be happening.....but there are textbooks too.

When it's come to homework or revision, being able to look back a few pages to check something, even if the homework isn't textbook based has been great. I think it gives a good sense of what comes before and after in a topic.

Realise these books are expensive and the schools can afford them because of fees. Makes me think it's all about money not ideology. In some subjects like GCSE History DS seems to have about 5 different textbooks - some quite slim and some pretty chunky. I think they are great.

I do wish we could send textbooks home with the kids. We used to when I first started at this school, but the kids complained they were too heavy to carry, and they get damaged too, so we stopped sending them home and all homework is worksheet based or online. That solved the problems above, but now they don't have the excellent resource of a textbook to look things up in when they're at home. There is always the internet to look things up on, but they don't seem to bother trying to Google things (even when you have pointed them in the direction of a fantastic website with amazing video explanations).

In my teacher training (10 years ago), textbooks weren't even mentioned. In fact how to get kids to write notes and take in content was hardly mentioned at all. The emphasis was all on awe and wonder. The underlying theme was no kid should be bored and if they were it was your fault. Textbooks apparently fell into the boring category. But a good textbook is great and kids really do like them if used well.

Personally I don't see how one can learn/revise properly without textbooks to refer to? DS has always had them at his secondary school but DD doesn't have ANY - I find it quite shocking TBQH. I know I'm 'old school' but still...

So, to summarise.

Some say it's lack of funding, but some schools still buy them.

Some teachers like using them, some don't.

Some say Ofsted take a dim view of use of text books.

Some say Teacher Training discourage text books.

Some say it's weight to carry.

Some say kids won't read them anyway.

It all sounds very disjointed, if even the teachers/schools can't agree on whether to use them or not, regardless of funding.

Perhaps we need the "McDonalds" approach to teaching where there is a fixed "system" that all schools/teachers should use, rather than what sounds like thousands of people doing their own thing.

So those of us involved with school age children, teachers and parents, agree and disagree on this subject.

I think the last word should go to Nick Gibb (not a teacher although possibly a parent? and definitely a chartered accountant formerly specialising in corporate taxation - which of course is closely aligned with education!) from his speech at the Policy Exchange on 30 Nov:

"(textbooks) provide something teachers will always struggle to create on their own – high quality, considered, extended prose pitched ambitiously, but not unrealistically, which can form the basis for lessons and schemes of work."

So, you uncreative teachers, you have been told ...... and insulted.

Yep, totally and conveniently forgetting that teachers never hated textbooks it was ofsted...