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.

@EBearhug my education started in 1990. They didn't have XEROXes or printers widely available back then :)) so hardback textbooks from the library + notepads were the way to go :)) in my country we had a textbook for every subject except of PE from the start and had to bring it to classes from home. We had to make sure we had all we needed for school the night before. Also every subject had a separate notepad for it.

They didn't have XEROXes or printers widely available back

I finished school in 1990. There were word processors and photocopiers, at least by the end, but there were also Banda printers in the '70s and '80s. We had quite a few purple printed sheets with the lovely smell... around age 11, we did quite a lot of maths exercises on typed sheets. It's possible they typed them out several times using carbon paper, but I think there was reprographics of some sort available. If not, I pity the secretaries...

I assume they reproduced them the same way they did the school letters etc.

Yes, I think I maths there are scheme that function pretty much like textbooks e.g. white rose is good for that. But nothing for science, geography or history.

My primary school was in a "village" with around 10-15 pupils in a year group and I'm 90% sure the most advanced tech they had was an analogue phone. Nevertheless when my brother and I moved to a megapolis at 8 and 10, we were on par with city kids because we were using the same materials and getting literally the same homework they were doing.
The only explanation I have for the UK not using unified education system is that state schools were not designed to give high quality education as UK had private schools for it through the whole history.

Not all private schools are good either and some have no textbooks. Education is very opaque in UK and lots of information online but no clear pathway.
Some of the top private schools really supporting the tutoring industry, not all kids but quite a few of them and they buy textbooks to get ahead of curriculum.

I'm so old that I was in the cohort taking O Level exams in 1980 which apparently was just after a major overhaul. We were using old textbooks - some easily 5-10 years old (there was a label in the front with names and forms of prior users!). Teachers would generally follow the text books, but tell us which chapters were no longer in the curriculum, so we just ignored those. Anything "new" that wasn't in the text books would be handed out on purple printed Gestetner duplicates. I specifically remember "sum books" for Maths which were huge books just full of page after page of "sums", starting with the basics, then moving onto basic algebra, then pythagoras etc etc - pretty sure we had them for several years and kept using them as we worked our way up the years through ever increasing difficulty levels.

But basically, I' say 80% of the "old" text books were still valid and relevant. I don't understand two things.

Firstly, why text books don't last as long any more - with some teachers saying they get lost or damaged within weeks. How could pupils in the 70s manage to look after them, remember them and not ruin them? What has changed?

Secondly, from the schools I've looked around on open days and then on parents' evenings, there were piles of text books all over the place. Why aren't they used, even if just handed out in lessons and handed back in again after being used?

I'm not a teacher, but I did teach accounting for adults at a local FE college. I never "made up" my own scrappy worksheets etc. The students used the "official" text books and work books which I followed and would give homework as being the end of chapter questions etc. But alongside that, I based lessons on two very old text books from my own student days, which I used for illustrative questions on the whiteboard during the lessons. I never felt the need for making my own resources. Between the official books and my old text books, I had plenty of "off the shelf" resources, examples, questions, etc. Why re-invent the wheel?

@Badbadbunny because all those school trusts literally exist for reinventing the wheel a thousand times.

https://www.educationuncovered.co.uk/news/164366/academy-trusts-wasting-millions-of-pounds-on-highlypaid-managers.thtml

I bought revision guides from Amazon for DD for the core subjects which helped her especially in Maths which was her weakest subject.

I noticed no textbooks either. At A level there's "suggested reading" which I and her dad have also funded. We've bought second hand from World of Books which saves a bit.

@Badbadbunny I could have written your post!!!

I sat O levels in 82.

We had the form to fill in at the front of each book too, with your name and the date issued.I used to enjoy reading all the names.Texts often at least ten years old.

Each time a new textbook was issued we had to 'back' it with brown paper or wrapping paper to keep it going.

Losing or damaging them was just not an option.

We got used to lugging them around. Biology and chemistry were the big beasts.

It makes me really sad that children are often not taught to love physical books as we were, rather than looking up online sources.

And something is clearly very wrong with the whole system now with grade inflation and so on. Why can Scandinavian children speak flawless English when children in our schools can barely speak or write their own language correctly? Anyway that is off topic, sorry to derail.

'Rather, looking up online sources', nor rather than.

Dd used textbooks a lot for A levels, as well as class notes. I also bought her some revision guides. She did a lot of past papers. 2 x A stars and an A.
This was a private school and textbooks definitely a thing still.

I remember dd thinking BbC bitesize was far too simplistic for gcses

@Words I recall we were using plastic bookcovers and there was a form for writing names because they were library books and it was a standard to put borrower's name on a form glued inside the book.

@Words @Badbadbunny
But I had a feeling from mumsnet that education in comprehensives years ago was of a very low quality. While quality improved, how come they phased out textbooks? Was it simple cost-cutting?

"Ideological hostility to the use of textbooks, particularly in primary schools, developed in the 1970s. Their replacement with worksheets and hundreds of thousands of bespoke written lesson plans has added to teacher workload, detracted from coherence and impacted on standards"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30129639

There's a good discussion with the author under the article https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/news/new-research-shows-why-textbooks-count-tim-oates/

It's especially funny to read that textbooks discourage deeper learning. What deep learning they expect from primary school kids or teenagers? Oh please.

Secondary teacher here. We use textbooks, we need new ones but we are due for a spec change in the next couple of years so I'm waiting to replace because they are so expensive.

I'm a high school teacher, never used textbooks because

1. They're too expensive.

1. They don't fit in with what you're actually teaching. All schools follow the national curriculum but you can choose exactly what the lessons are like. Often pages in the textbook are just irrelevant.

1. Textbooks are not differentiated- they're often too complicated or too easy for pupils. Whereas with PowerPoints and Word docs, content can be altered to meet your pupils' needs.

1. Ofsted expectations- you would probably fail an observation if you shoved a text book at pupils. You are expected to be creative in your lessons.

1. GCSE we tend to use CGP guides in class. They're sort of a different version of textbooks.

Do you use them only in classroom, or students can use them at home for revision? Do you start using them from Y7?

What an absolutely cataclysmic indictment on the current state of English education that schools can't afford books.

Ditto that the textbooks that are available don't broadly mirror the curriculum? Why?

( I know the answer to these next ones here, but it's just heartbreaking!) :

Why are children not streamed at least roughly, according to ability and why are children with ( often profound) disabilities not accommodated in more suitable settings?

The answers are I think:

1An ideological motivation from 70s onwards
2coupled with Thatcherite changes
And now of course.
3 no money

It's a disgrace. I am so glad I am child free. It's so disgusting and disgraceful and sad.

We can't afford to let them go home, they don't come back. We have digital copies that kids can access if needed. We don't use them for everything as there are so many other great resources to access now. Ks4 and 5 kids buy revision guides though.

We’ve just been round a few secondary school open evenings and they all had loads of textbooks out. For most subjects and there were tons of them!

Why don't they come back though? Why do pupils ( everyone- not students, please !!!) have so little respect?

What has led to this?

Were these books on students' desks? I was at open morning last week but was not paying attention to it (because I feel we'll have to buy all the textbooks for home use anyway).

Well at the evening it was for displays but we have been to mornings too and their desks seemed to be covered in books. Will keep an eye out for one next week too!