Pupils in a bind over school textbooks

IF the history/geography teachers are feeling sorry for themselves regarding changes in secondary curriculums, what about parents of secondary school pupils regarding textbooks?

I have in recent days been trying to organise my four daughters’ textbooks for the forthcoming academic year. Yesterday I pulled out various text books and workbooks from our attic in the vain hope that at least some of these could be re-used.

What really, really annoys me is not just the regular changing of textbooks but also the “must-have” additional work books which some subjects, including geography and history, seem to have.