Are textbooks (printed or digital) not used any more? How do students revise?

[ParentOfOne]

We are looking into secondary schools and are a bit shocked at what seems to be the trend of getting rid of textbooks in the UK.

This has been a bit of problem in primary school, when our child asks for help, we explain something, she says the teacher explained it differently, but doesn't know how... because there is no textbook!!

At primary school it's not been anything over which to lose sleep, but in secondary it might be different.

• Is this really a trend all over the country?
• Across both private and public (we're not considering private, just curious)?
• I don't care whether the material is printed or online, but are students expected to revise based on the notes they take in class? Taking notes for a detailed history class might be harder than for a maths class. But how about subjects like biology, which require all kinds of graphs and images?
• What are your thoughts?
• Have you bought textbooks? How do your children revise?
• Getting rid of textbooks might be a way to cut on costs, but I suppose there is plenty of free material online to explain fractions logarithms WW1 etc

I know many people who are university lecturers, and they all tend to think this trend is a catastrophe, because by the time they start university students are not used to the concept of studying a textbook, they expect that anything can and should be summarised into a few bullet points on a slide.

Textbooks are too expensive for schools to buy, and in many subjects they need changing every time the specification changes, so a huge amount of money from tiny budgets.
But other than that I agree with you, I don’t think it is helpful in many ways.
You can but books yourself for your dc to have at home if you afford that, eg CGP do a decent enough KS3 science textbook to back up what they are doing in school.

I don't have general experience of other schools, but my DD is in Y9 and there are no textbooks brought home.

They have lots of paper stuck into their exercise books, they have various slides and lesson notes available on Teams, they have various online resources (Dr Frost, Educake and probably others) and are sometimes directed to BBC Bitesize to help with revision.

I understand that, at the start of Y10, they will have the opportunity to purchase (at discounted prices) various study materials relevant to the exam boards.

DD's bag is heavy enough without textbooks. It seems to be fine.

Edited to add that this is a state grammar school.

I don't understand why they don't have textbooks anymore. Teachers are allowed time for "planning" (so that is time taken away from their primary task of teaching) which appears to consist of every teacher re-writing their own textbook. Every. Single. Year.
I cannot see how this is effective use of time.

As PP said, CGP can be useful. There is also BBC Bitesize.

As already said - there's little use of textbooks now. Lots of handouts and online resources.
You won't need revision guides until yr11.

Can't understand how children are expected to study with information in multiple locations.

We asked the school for the textbook names and bought them for use at home.
It's not cheap and unfair to those who can't afford them.

I often hear this point about specifications changing, but how often do they change? The theory of how fractions logarithms cells chemical compounds etc work hasn't changed much over the last decades (at least at the level taught in secondary schools).

Are children given a consistent reference? As in: children, you will find this material on this website / in this book in the library etc

Or are children left scrambling to put together different pieces of information from different sources - which can be very time-consuming and inefficient in itself?

"teacher re-writing their own textbook. Every. Single. Year."
@senua what do you mean every year? Isn't it almost a one-off exercise? How much can the material change from year to year? Or do schools change not so much the topics but the way they are presented?

"You won't need revision guides until yr11."
@Beamur Do you mean students are expected to do little revision before the GCSE? How do they revise at that point? isn't that a bit of a shock if they are not used to revising? Many other countries use textbooks and instil the concept of recurring revision much earlier on

There are no text books anymore.

Sometimes the schools use app like math swatch or educate. Often on here you get pointed in direction of https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize or https://senecalearning.com/en-GB/ or paid ones.

We got revision/course guides - and spent a small fortune - from Y9/Y10 onwards for GCSE and AS/A-level. But next year here in Wales there a big reorganisation of GCSE exams - so won't have much chance to sell on ones we have and there won't be as much out there for those kids doing new exams.

DS notes were dire for GCSE and some of his teachers inundated them with verbose notes or often photocopies pages - so revision guides were vital fro him DD2 only two school years behind many more teachers and departments have topic booklets which make it all easier.

Exam board also has app where you can put in subject paper and topic and it will let you select past questions and put answers at back - school and we use it.

Never felt bar topics I had much handle on what my kids in primary were doing - so just did our own support work for basics at home.

My lecturers in 90s were compiling us students didn't do the reading round they did in their day and DH - HE lecturer subject is more practical based so it doesn't affect him as much. I do worry DD1 may not be doing enough reading round her subject but she getting good grades and in some areas the internet sites have more specific up to date information on specific areas than any book and her degree has practical skills in there as well.

"teacher re-writing their own textbook. Every. Single. Year."
what do you mean every year? Isn't it almost a one-off exercise? How much can the material change from year to year? Or do schools change not so much the topics but the way they are presented?
You'd have to ask a teacher this because the system makes no sense to me!

There was an interesting thread about this recently:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/further_education/5158860-why-on-earth-arent-subject-text-books-plugged-more?reply=138105341

I often hear this point about specifications changing, but how often do they change?

I think minor changes can be surprisingly frequent - but Wales is doing huge change - current Y10 being last one here to do current GCSE.

They are reorganising subjects - so think it's just science no triple - English lit and lang being merged together - and maths numeracy and maths being merged back together - new subjects at least that what I last heard as not following as much as doesn't affect directly my kids.

Depends on schools, not an issue between private or state. Primary which was private had this issue which is a nightmare. As suggested , CPG and bonds books, do look at eBay or exam ninja website for deals. Secondary school depends on subjects so sciences and English have textbooks, some have booklets, some just notes and slides.

Both of mine have/ had textbooks for most subjects for GCSEs and A levels.
They get given them but we have to pay if they lose them or don't hand them in when finished with them.
I think they had them less in y7 and 8- can't really remember! Independent schools.

@ParentOfOne as others have said, secondary students use various online and printed resources. However, many Sixth Forms do provide online access to text books. It costs a similar amount to printed books, but they don't go out of date or get lost.

Printed books are vintage. See https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/business-48998789.amp. I bought my son printed books for his A level courses, but he barely opened them

My son is now at uni and he gets free online access to electronic books via his uni library - much better than having to shell out hundreds of pounds like I did at uni.

@drastikaction Mine isn't nostalgia for printed books. Like I said, I don't care much about whether it's printed or online. But I do care about having a resource to go back to to check and revise.

Revising just based on your own notes is very inefficient and risky (what if you didn't note everything down, missed something, etc).

Looking for resources yourself online or in a library is very inefficient: so many to choose from, with different styles and levels of detail, plus not all online resources are of the same quality.

It's good that textbooks exist at least for 6th form. I wonder if that will be a bit of a shock for some people because it will be so new to them?

I know this isn’t really what you asked. But my experience of university is that quite a lot of subjects don’t use textbooks either. I’m in my 30’s and most of my studying was online resources because textbooks are out of date before they are published (this was a science based subject). I imagine it’s probably even less now than then.

so I don’t think kids will be disadvantaged when they get to uni for having not used textbooks much.

This is interesting. Can I ask what happens about set texts for English? Do pupils get a whole book to read or are they just given part of the text as a handout or online? I'd be sorry to think that pupils aren't expected to read whole books, although I'm probably wearing rose-tinted glasses here. Maybe they never did, even when it was expected and possible because they had the whole novel, poetry anthology, play or short story collection.

I spent a significant amount of my time at school (many decades ago) studying Latin and Ancient Greek. The ancient literature doesn't go out of date, oddly enough, although from time to time the teaching approach changes so there used to be new introductory textbooks, grammars, dictionaries etc. No idea if these are now online or if the old printed texts are still handed out.

Revising just based on your own notes is very inefficient and risky (what if you didn't note everything down, missed something, etc).

Most families get hold of at least a few revision/course guides by buying - sometimes second hand - or by getting from students finished with them.

Also there are on-line sources these days - bbc site good - and for science there often you tubers who are recommended often for certain exam boards.

That's interesting. Were you at least given clear indications of where to study / revise? Were you told to look up a specific book / website etc? Or was the approach "I have explained how the cell works, now it's up to you to find one of the hundreds of books available to revise"?

The lecturers I spoke to were, in fact, a combination of older people and foreigners who studied in a very different education system.

I think more advanced courses often make reference to papers published in scientific journals if the topic is too advanced or new, but this shouldn't apply to the first years of an undergraduate course. Maybe teaching methods have changed, but I think that calculus and cells and chemical compounds etc still work today the same way humankind taught they worked 3 decades ago, no?

In the U.K. although there is a national curriculum only schools run by the local authority need to stick to it.

This means that in years 7,8 and 9 there is no national list of what is taught when.

In English each school chooses their own books/poetry etc. In maths most schools use online resources like Dr Frost maths or Sparx maths. The online resources are usually aligned to the curriculum at the school and will have videos and questions for each topic.

At gcse level many subjects do have textbooks. However for example, history has 4 options. So there is a textbook per option (medical history, Nazi germany etc)
Textbooks are expensive (50 pounds plus each in my subject) and state schools can't afford new ones.

In maths (my subject) we have in school about 6 sets of gcse textbooks, built up over 20 years. Most are now a bit out of date (eg chapter 20 is no longer examined sort of thing). There's 10 gcse classes and if you want a set of textbooks for your gcse class you need to get into school in late August and grab them out of the cupboard before anyone else does.
We'd never let any of them go home.

We do ask students at the end of year 10 to buy a revision guide and workbook that is aligned wihh to what is currently on the exam. This tells them what is on the exam and has questions (and answers in the back) for them to revise from,

In years 7,8 and 9 we expect them to revise from the online resources. So for example in my school I have created a curriculum in Dr Frost. Students and their parents can see what topic is taught when. It goes week by week so they can see each week. Each topic has a video or two with it and some example questions going from very easy to very difficult.
That's their textbook,

Also I went to university in the UK thirty years ago.

We did not use textbooks. (Social sciences).

We were given reading lists which included academic books and papers from the first year of my study. Some of those books were textbooks but we certainly didn't have one textbook for the whole course.

It would be more:
This week we are studying the Phillips curve. Required reading: macroeconomics by Phillips chapter 6, obscure academic paper 1, obscure academic paper 2, essay title is "to what extent did the Phillips curve break down in the 1970s".

DD is in year 12, no textbooks for GCSE but the school did recommend various revision guides (and for the sciences we could buy them through the school for a reduced cost). They did all have their own copies of set texts, again bought at reduced cost through the school (they were encouraged to write notes in them so they couldn’t really reuse them).

For her A levels, she has been asked to get textbooks and I have just spent a small fortune on them (best part of £180!).

I did my A levels in the 1990s and I can remember not getting A level textbooks until year 13 as the school could only afford one set. In fact my history teacher lent me some of his own books to help me prepare for the Oxford entrance exam.

We got given reading lists but it was normally a list of peer review studies and technical books which the library would have 5 copies off with 100 students (and would be cost prohibitive to buy).

Basic diagrams to understand how cells work etc was covered in lectures. It might vary across universities /courses but really at undergrad level you are expected to go find your own resources and read a broad range and form understanding, not just memorise what the lecturer has given you on a worksheet/textbook. If there was a formula/concept that I didn’t understand from lectures and I needed a more basic explanation than technical papers I would normally use Wikipedia even back then!

Mine had to read the whole book

And whilst I can’t speak for calculus cell biology definitely would be out of date in the 5 years it takes to write and publish a textbook. You needed to be referencing latest research in 2nd year onwards in your exams not just basic concepts of biology. And in coursework you are expected to reference relevant studies even in first year so reading textbooks wouldn’t be enough.

My sons didn't use their own notes for revision - they would have struggled to do that because their bits of paper weren't neatly filed and often just loose in the bottom of their bag. Like you, I found it difficult to get used to, but both of them got a string of top grades at GCSE and A Level. They revised using online resources that were provided by their teachers, including links to things like BBC Bitesize and Seneca, and by doing past exam papers, and looking things up online.