Why subscribe?
Absolutely Textbook is about the politics and business of publishing teaching and learning materials.
I publish once a month (although sometimes more). Each issue is a 10-minute read digging into a live news story affecting publishers, packed with links and attempting to answer the question of what’s really going on. I try to make important, but let’s face it sometimes dry, topics accessible. Expect jokes and niche pop culture references.
Who are Absolutely Textbook’s readers? Subscribers come from the UK, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. They are publishers and editors at major educational publishers; they work in publishers’ trade associations; they write textbooks; they work at Ministries of Education; they are academics interested in the role of teaching materials in an education system.
If you’re interested in education, I think you’ll find something for you.
To give you an idea of what I write about, here are some of my favourite posts so far:
In October 2022 I kicked off a lively debate by asking whether Oak National Academy was a public good at a time of need or a government overstep that risked throttling a lively commercial sector.
In June 2022 I wrote about why cartoons in a Chinese Mathematics textbook went viral and how they resulted in a complete review of every textbook in use in schools across the country.
In April 2022 I wrote about a consistent problem felt around the world that we just don’t talk about enough – heavy backpacks – and what some publishers are doing about it.
In February 2022 I wrote about why South Africa has committed to provide free textbooks to all students and how a divergent approach to finance had led the Eastern Cape Bureau of Education to fail the country’s poorest students.
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