Are text books a thing of the past?

[Ladyflip]

Neither of my children have any text books for any subject. They are both in secondary. Is this how secondaries are now? What happens if you miss a lesson or need to revise for exams? Does it change at year 10?
I'm a dinosaur and remember the beginning of every school year being dominated by handing out of books. It's not a criticism, just wondered when and why it changed.
Their school is large and there are no lockers on site. This may be the driver as to no text books as they have to carry everything with them all day. Just interested as to whether this is the same for all secondary schools.

We have found teachers happy to recommend a book if you ask. Once they get to GCSE, plenty of opportunity to buy guides from the school, or to order from places like CPG who have subjects by exam board.

Ds only got a school provided text book for higher maths, we bought some others for revision.

The school gave them lots of things to revise with - access to scholar, bbc bitesize, handouts, their own notes, materials on teams or revision notes and practice questions on the school website. They also have access to past papers.

Big part of senior years for ds was learning how to keep his work/ lots of handouts organised with a wallet folder for every subject handouts/jotter in his bag and folders at home for every subject to put materials in he didn't need to carry to school anymore. It is really worth helping them early on to get into a routine each day or two of quickly sorting out notes/handouts.

He had access to much much more to revise from than I ever had at school (pre Internet).

I taught MFL and I did use textbooks (more for GCSE and A level than KS3) but we had one set and certainly couldn't afford to hand them out to every child. We used to pass them from room to room and if two teachers wanted them at once it was an issue.

If we had given them out we would never have seen some of them again. tbh.

For revision, as others say, there are CGP KS3 and GCSE guides and workbooks, these are good for MFL certainly.

For worksheets, supply them with glue stick and get them to stick in then and there.

I am not anti text book but did have some horrifically poor teaching as a kid, entire subjects were open the text book at page whatever, copy it down and answer the questions.

We stopped using textbooks in my school in my subject (Science) after the last specification change. The books are horrendously expensive, and on the last spec we had ( to start with ) 32 copies, ie 2 class sets based on kids sharing one book between 2. ( 9 classes per year, 2 year course so nothing like a set per class) . But then one copy is needed in isolation, another copy is in learning support, a part time member of staff has taken one home to look at, a member of staff thought they were being nice lending a copy to a keen kid and all of a sudden you have kids sharing 3 to a textbook, and they can’t do that effectively at all.
So now we have an online textbook that they all have access to at any point when they have access to the internet. Yes there are issues over screen time and many ( myself included) prefer reading on paper but it has been the best ( in all honesty the only feasible) option for a cash starved state school.

My dc has no textbooks...every term they get a printed book containing each subjects curriculum for that term. Plus worksheets

@Ladyflip, as others have said, text books are expensive and go out of date quickly. The schools can't generally afford them, especially when students wreck or lose them. But individual teachers/departments may choose to buy some if they have enough budget, and usually ask for them to be returned. My DS is doing A levels now. He was given a text book for Year 12 maths, but now has to hand it back in at the end of Year 12 to be given to the next cohort. In year 13 he will get a different text book covering the higher topics. However he does have online access to both books - the school has a license for that - which means he can access them on the go.

For physics he wasn't given a book and was struggling with inadequate notes from poor explanations in class. I didn't twig this until his year 12 exams came round and he seemed very worried. So I bought him the official text book for the course. It has been under his bed since then - not sure if he's opened it. It does also come with online access, so hopefully he will benefit from that - I now wonder if I could have bought just the online access, for lower cost, but I didn't check that.

You might be interested to read this BBC article: Education publisher Pearson to phase out print textbooks www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/business-48998789.amp

This surprised me too. They don't even expect them to have dictionaries for French/German

@Fruitloopcowabunga

This surprised me too. They don't even expect them to have dictionaries for French/German

A dictionary is a really good idea tho (but i agree v few of my students had one)

The biggest reason for Secondary in my opinion has been the frequent changes in the exam specifications, that renders a text book out of date after only a year or so (my subject, Computer Science has had three full syllabus changes at GCSE level since 2016 alone). If the exam boards could leave a syllabus alone for more than a couple of years, that would really help.

The arrival of the interactive whiteboard in the 2000s also meant that a different way of teaching could be facilitated and this was during a time when, to cater for differentiation, it was considered lazy by Ofsted to use a textbook, which was one resource as opposed to many created for all the different needs. In addition, teachers were perceived to be more ‘lazy’ if they used a textbook in class instead of coming up with the full lesson themselves.

We are now getting more pedagogical research that favours other methods of differentiation and so it may be that textbooks might start to make more of an appearance at Secondary, alongside the fashion for a more knowledge rich curriculum than a skills based one of the recent past. We would also need to re-train our young people back in to books and away from digital resources if they were to truly make a wholesale return to all.

And a better budget for schools to buy these astronomically priced books would also help!

This isn't a recent development.
I remember questioning my ds about it when he started secondary in 2007.
Any text needed will be put on whatever system the school uses for it's intranet / homework log in.

Text books go out of date quickly and are incredibly expensive. I seem to remember buying each of mine their English GCSE books so they could annotate and refer to things, and then some GCSE revision guides in Yr 11.

Both my kids have text books for every subject (except DT, art and computer science). They are at a big co ed boarding school. Lots of preps are along the lines of pg. 266 questions 1-10, some preps are online quizzes or past papers. Text books, folders, copy books get added onto the terms bill. School shop adds on any paper, pens, calculators purchased. I like that they have proper text books (and so much nicer than my old school books), but I am a book person. My DS likes doing as much as possible online, presentations with PowerPoint using sound effects and graphics, DD likes both the books and the online quizzes. They both agree the maths prep from the text books is generally long and hard whereas maths prep from a software package (can’t remember what it’s called but I can look it up if anyone is interested) is great fun.