Your comments say it all

Our request for a national review of Australian school libraries has been sent to Julia Gillard.  It has been supported by our petition which at the time had 1600 signatures.  The petition remains open and your comments are particularly telling:

“The BER was intended to promote and enhance school libraries, but in Queensland, under misguided departmental management, books are being undervalued and discarded. Teacher librarians are forced to follow trends that they don’t believe in, making libraries “pretty” but not functional. Unqualified people are employed in school libraries at the expense of trained teacher librarians. It’s a very lamentable state of affairs. No wonder Q’ld scores poorly on literacy tests. Shame Education Q’ld shame!”

“After working as a T-L since 1975, it breaks my heart to see how library programs and the promotion of literature are being destroyed through not having or cutting the hours of trained T-Ls in school libraries. In an age of so much information, the teaching of Information Literacy is even more important. Students deserve better.”

“Spending $3.82 billion for school library construction and refurbishment is wonderful – but where is the ultimate value without a trained teacher librarian in each library to select the appropriate books, be familiar with them, and recommend them appropriately to enthuse and inform the students?”

“Yes Spot on. I know of a number of schools here [S.A.], albeit small schools, that are using SSOs (School Support Officers) and parent support to manage their resource centres. At our school with over 500 students there is a full-time librarian but only a part-time SSO. The result of this is that the trained teacher has to do many tasks that should be the SSO’s job so that that there is less tme for teaching and learning for which the teacher is actually being paid. In spite of so-called government formulas for teacher/student .”

“Please . for the sake of the children…. Help us help them to become life long learners.”

“TLs are integral in promoting literature and developing literacy including information literacy skills in students. They are not mere custodians of libraries but educators in their own right. Staffing of schools with trained TL’s should be outside the normal school staffing formulae. “[ACT]

“There are so many diverse skills that Teacher Librarians bring to the practice of teaching and learning across all school levels. They are flexible facilitators of the learning process, able to make connections between subject areas, access all types of media and teach how to embed life long learning skills to all students.”

“Since I began teaching in the 1970s, it had become natural for all schools to have a teacher librarian who worked with staff and children. Such teachers were able to assist in developing the high quality of reading and learning standards set in Australian schools during the 1980’s and 1990’s. THis was a ‘golden’ period in children’s literature in Australia where the library became the focal point for reading and researching in holistic and integrated learning approaches.”

“I have been Principal, Staff Trainer, Reading consultant and qualified Teacher Librarian. I believe this to be my most crucial role . My work in schools with Literacy promotion/ organisation of electronic information provides essential support. Resource management is the key to easier access for teachers and students. The removal of Teacher Librarians has been an educational disaster – new buildings, a revolution in education and no one to staff or manage the resources. SHAME!”

“There is a worrying trend to think of librarians as superfluous in the age of the internet. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are the heart and soul of any decent school. Schools deserve trained teacher librarians who have the capacity to guide and assist students in their studies and lead them to the joys of reading for pleasure.”

“Some schools have not had books for their school libraries for many years because they have no idea about what they should purchase. There is no one in the school able to recommend books to students. Schools are begging for someone with knowledge about children’s literature. It is shameful.” [Vic]

These are just a few of the hundreds of comments which speak so clearly about the decline of school libraries. Write to your local federal member to urge Julia Gillard to request a national review of Australian school libraries now. Sample Letter

Maralyn Parker, Daily Tele, supports our cause

Sydney Daily Telegraph education journalist, Maralyn Parker, has taken up our cause with an excellent opinion piece in today’s Tele.  (See page 28.)  It also appears, with minor changes, on her blog, with links to our petition and to The Hub. There is an opportunity to comment

She has discovered that some 2802 new primary school libraries will be built, although no one can give her the numbers of qualified TLs staffing them.

She might have said we have had no government set standards since Books and Beyond (1977), since, of course, we have our excellent professional standards, Learning for the Future (ASLA/ALIA, 2001), and there were reports after the Fenwick report in 1966 which attempted to evaluate the Commonwealth’s Australian School Libraries Programs. But these were not national reviews as such.

The effects of “flexibility and choice” in staffing on school libraries needs to be made clear also. Even NSW, which has long staffed libraries outside of the established formula, is looking at trialling the “devil-ution” of staffing, now common in other states. Next year this flexiblility is to be trialled in 47 schools. This is how principals are often forced to cash in some positions for others, and lose their teacher librarians.

But she has a link to the ASLRP survey snapshots! And she understands our value to students and learning. So, thank you, Maralyn Parker, for supporting our cause, and thereby, building a real education revolution.

Leave your comments on her blog. Let the general public, especially parents, know we need a national review.

Your local media should also be interested.  Contact them too!

Keeping their legacy Pt 2: A national review

Few are still with us who led the campaign for our school libraries in the 60s and 70s.  There are no more state supervisors of school library services.  There are no more state school library services.  In fact, one is hard pressed to find any mention of school libraries on some state and territory department of education websites.  Try to find a reference on the Vic or ACT or NT DET sites. And the state of school library staffing and funding has been described in a previous blog.

State School Library Services

Well staffed state services which provided training, policy advice, advocacy, publications, resource lists, school visits, and even management of school library placements are now a thing of the past. The larger states have had services restructured as curriculum support with reviewing and cataloguing for SCIS, some policy revision and limited PD. NSW does this with a staff of only 5 (close to 60 in the 70s!). Qld still does excellent Curriculum Resource Reviews, but has no school library support personnel as such.

Tasmanian schools have lost their School Library Service, and are left with one librarian in the State Library to advise on the new automated school library system.

WA has no school library service as such but CMIS provides (excellent) curriculum resource evaluation (7 FT and 3 pt time) and SCIS cataloguing (8) and PD when asked.  They offer school library support through their website, phone advice, blogs and now tweet.

South Australia’s School Library Services Branch is gone, as are their regional school library advisors, with one officer currently, managing the Premier’s Reading Challenge.

So who is available to advise state departments of education on school libraries?  Who supports schools in their efforts to build quality library services  which support teaching and learning? Much of this has been left to the professional associations, national, state and local.  However, according the ASLRP survey, less than 50% of TLs belong to ASLA and ALIA, the major sources of TL PD.

So after 30 some years since the federal school library revolution, we now have BER libraries being built but not professionally staffed,  no Schools Commission or state policy advisors, limited or no support services to schools, limited DET PD and, with the end of Commonwealth grants and compensatory GST funding, it’s back to parent fund-raising for school library resources.  Overall, a drastic decline since the 1970s, especially if you contrast this with the webspace, policies, and support infrastructure for ICT in schools!!

TL training programs

We see the same pattern in TL training programs.

There was a big response to federal funding for trained teacher librarians after the reports of the 70s. Something like 15 TL training courses were mounted at universities and CAEs. Now we have three specifically for TLs.* “Despite the progress made there is still not a qualified teacher librarian for every school. Indeed the dearth of qualified teacher librarians is again a concern.”  (Henri and Freeman, Tlship at CSU: then and now, 2006)

Devil-ution

The third change effecting school library staffing is in the “devolution, flexibility and choice” of staffing.  TLs in Tasmania, for example, lost their separate staffing entitlement.  Increasing self-management meant schools now have to choose between having a TL or another teacher, also the case in Victoria.  Qld has moved toward the same flexibility. And NSW is about to have a “trial” of 47 schools in school-based decision-making on budget, staffing mix and recruitment.

A Commonwealth initiative is needed such as has just begun by petition in the UK to “make school libraries, run by properly qualified staff, statutory.”

Call for a National Review

Our petition for a qualified TL in every school, then, will be presented with this request: That there be a national review of school libraries in Australia, the first in 35 years. [Note: The letter has now been sent]

Such an inquiry should include:

• The lack of useable government data for decision making on school libraries and data collection from state education agencies
• The shortage of qualified TLs
• The need for national standards, including agreed role statements and qualifications
• The school library and TL in teacher pre-service and in-service ed. – in literacy, collaborative teaching, information literacy, etc.
• Explicit policy and curriculum recognition of role of TLs and libraries in literacy and learning
• A national curriculum for Information Literacy and ICT
• The need for sponsorship of research on the effect of school libraries on student learning, literacy and academic achievement
• School library funding equity, including the cost of digital information services in schools
• The role of school libraries in indigenous literacy
• Sponsorship of university tuition fees to qualified teachers wishing to retrain as teacher librarians. (See the NSW DoE sponsored retraining in teacher librarianship)
• The re-introduction of undergraduate teacher librarianship programs in Australian universities through the sponsorship of positions in those Bachelor of Education programs that offer teacher librarianship as a teaching specialisation.
• The decline of central support services in each state.

In other words: The 21^st C school library: what should it look like to maximize equity and student learning outcomes?

Comments encouraged!  GP

*Gone

University of SA, Monash, Kuringai CAE, RMIT, Canberra CAE, University of Melbourne, Macquarie University, Ballarat CAE, Gippsland CAE, Tasmanian CAE, University of NT

Still here: CSU, QUT, Edith Cowan. There is also a University of Tasmania partnership program with Edith Cowen.

How will we keep their legacy? Pt. 1

Roy Lundin.  Joyce Fardell.  Margaret Trask. Jim Dwyer. Laurie McGrath. John Gorton. Malcolm Fraser.  How many of us know what they did for the school libraries we now work in and which our children love?   Jim Dwyer’s ACE Archival Brief No. 7 tells us.

There were no school libraries to speak of before Professor Sarah Fenwick’s study visit to Australia in 1964 was commissioned by the Library Association of Australia, now ALIA. (Fenwick, S. 1966. School and children’s libraries in Australia: a report to the Children’s Libraries Section of the Library Association of Australia Cheshire, Melbourne)

“Libraries of substance at that time were virtually non-existent in primary schools. At secondary level most schools had a classroom set aside as a library, with a collection limited in size, scope and recency, due mainly to an almost total lack of trained library staff.” (Dwyer, 2009)

Fenwick’s report formed the basis for the building of a coalition and a movement.

“By 1966 the calls for Commonwealth intervention to provide financial support for libraries in educational institutions had grown apace. These calls had come from not just the LAA but also other bodies including the Australian School Library Association (ASLA), state and private school authorities, teacher associations, school councils and professors of education. Of special note was the backing of the Australian Teachers Federation (ATF).” (Dwyer, 2009)

The LAA then established the Committee on Federal Aid to Secondary Libraries with Dr. Andrew Fabinyi as Convenor and Margaret Trask as secretary. They worked for four years “on contacting the widest possible range of education-related bodies to seek their support and advice and encourage their active involvement.” Fabinyi and Trask met with Senator John Gorton, Minister for Education and Science. “It was at this meeting that Gorton, strongly supportive of the committee’s aims, suggested that a meeting with Prime Minister Harold Holt might be advantageous. The suggestion was followed up and on 12 December 1967 the Prime Minister replied, agreeing to arrange a meeting early in 1968.  Sadly, within a week the Prime Minister was missing, presumed drowned.”

When Gorton became Prime Minister,  Malcolm Fraser was appointed Minister of Education. At a meeting with Fraser in May 1968, it was agreed that Federal aid should be provided to train secondary teacher librarians and stock school libraries.  $27 million was allocated in the Federal Budget in August. A committee was also formed to establish standards. The entire scheme was eventually overseen by the Schools Commission established in 1973.  They appointed a separate committee to extend the program to primary libraries.

Thus the efforts of the many groups involved came to fruition.  School libraries were established with trained teacher librarians to oversee their management which changed teaching practice, to resource-based, inquiry learning.  The Commission was also responsible for computer generated catalogue studies and the initial funding of the Australian Schools Catalogue Information Service (eventually SCIS). Jim Dwyer goes on to say “Without doubt this was one of the few truly successful national, cooperative endeavours in Australian education history.”

Next Pt. 2: 40 years on

Petition deadline Thursday

Next week the sitting of Parliament resumes in Canberra. The Petitions Committee chair will receive our petition on Friday and take it to the Minister of Education and her counterparts next week.  So last chance to sign.

Then, what do you think might be our next step?  Many in the Australian library community have for the past decade called for a review of school libraries in Australia. One is Friends of  Libraries Australia President, Alan Bundy.  Read his letter to the Victorian Minister of Education in 2003.  He asks for a national review of school libraries in crisis.  Alan Tudge’s response is now dated.  The 2007 Staff in Australia’s Schools report indicates that teacher librarians are one of the shortage areas for primary specialist teachers.

Certainly many bodies concerned with school libraries, teacher librarians, children’s books, public education, principals’ groups, unions, and so on would be interested in making submissions to such an inquiry.  So write to Julia Gillard now.  The time is right with the developments in a national curriculum and new libraries being built under BER and the devolution of budgeting and staffing to school principals.

The last national review was the Fenwick Report of 1966 commissioned by the then Library Association of Australia.  This report had a strong influence on eventual Commonwealth funding of school libraries, the building of libraries, the development of standards (Books and Beyond) and the training of teacher librarians in the halcyon days of the 1970s.  But what has happened since school libraries have become the responsibility of the states and territories?

Australia is well overdue for a review of school library staffing and funding and role in supporting teaching and learning.

Our first 1000 signatures!

Wow! Over 1000 signatures in two weeks, since our launch on 20 October. This is something surely every Australian parent and bookseller and author and teacher and teacher educator and teacher librarian should support. So don’t just sign, but pass on the petition to your Australian friends, relations and colleagues who will support a qualified teacher librarian in every school.

For parents: Research has shown that qualified TLs increase literacy and student achievement. It is important that parents take an interest in this important area of the school at a time when funding and staffing has been reduced for so many school libraries in Australia.

For teachers: Research has shown that qualified TLs increase literacy and student achievement. They provide resources to classroom teachers, helping them keep the curriculum up to date with new information and new technological tools. Teacher-librarians take extra university courses beyond that needed for their teaching certificate to gain the qualifications and skills to help students and teachers. (see What a TL can do for you

Join our campaign now.  Comments add value on the petition. Write to you local federal and state member and sign our petition too.

Qualified TLs support authentic, constructivist quality teaching and learning. Qualified TLs are trained to be leaders in collaborative, whole school literacy and information skills programs. Qualified TLs keep up with the latest in publishing for young people, in IT and learning, and in curriculum developments.

Our students deserve no less than a qualified TL in every school library.

Sign our petition now

Sign our petition now

According to a recent survey of Australian school libraries, 35% of Australian public school libraries have no professional staffing. Tas, WA, Vic and the NT had the lowest number of teacher librarians (TLs) employed.

Yet, “a strong library program that is adequately staffed, resourced and funded can lead to higher student achievement regardless of the socioeconomic or educational levels of the adults in the community” (Lonsdale, ACER, 2003).

We, at the Hub, call on the federal government to ensure that all Australian primary and secondary students have access to a school library and a qualified teacher librarian.

As it has done in the past, the federal government is in a position to influence state school library funding and staffing. To do this, they can: collect national data on school library staffing, funding, and scheduling; tie funding so that states can and must adequately staff and fund school library programs and services; require that literacy programs and other national curricula should explicitly recognize the central role school libraries have in student achievement, literacy attainment, and preparation for post-secondary success; develop national school library standards; increase teacher librarian training positions in university programs.

All Australian students deserve 21st century schools staffed by 21st century professionally qualified teacher librarians.

Join us in our petition to the federal government. (Write your own state petition!)

This petition will be presented through MP, Sharon Bird, to the Minister of Education, Julia Gillard and her counterparts, Christopher Pyne and other parties’ education spokespeople, to the House Standing Committee on Education and Training.  Ms Bird is chair of this committee.

Signatories are urged to add their own comments for stronger impact. Please spread the word to teachers, parents, principals, authors, librarians, booksellers, and all those who support strong, well-staffed school libraries.

The Hub at ASLA XXI

Well, in 24 hours I will know if it was standing room only, or if the room echoed with the sounds of me rustling my notes.  Yes, The Hub is appearing in person tomorrow at the ASLA XXI Biennial Conference.  We were a last minute entry,   due to the late cancellation of some other presenter. Whoever and wherever you are, I hope you are okay, and thanks so much for the spot.  It also means that fellow hubber Georgia had made other plans, so it’s just a solo presentation.

So if you would like to hear more of what we’re on about, get some inspiration for singing the praises of TLs,  have any questions you would like to ask in person,  or even if you’re itching to put me in my place for a previous blog post that didn’t sit well with you, come along.   We’re all about TLs speaking up, so bring your interactive self and add your voice to the discussion.

Getting the word out, G Phillips and L Paatsch

ASLA XXI Biennial Conference, Thursday Oct 1,  11am (concurrent session D)

LP

Opportunity for Action at ASLA conference

The Australian School Library Association Conference next week in Perth is an opportunity to rededicate ourselves as teachers, librarians, parents, writers, and citizens to reversing the decline of school libraries in this country.

The Australian School Libraries Research Project (ASLRP) by ALIA, ASLA and Edith Cowan University, provides us initial “snapshots” on the current state of school library services in Australia (Barbara Combes, 2008) .

What it shows is a great inequity between school library staffing and funding across Australian schools.

Budgets abysmal

The survey found that the majority of school library budgets are abysmal! Half of the government school budgets are under $5000, and one in six budgets are under $1000. In  NT schools, most of which are remote, over half have budgets under $500!

Staffing in declline

The survey showed that 35% of government school libraries have no teacher librarians.  Approximately two thirds of all schools have either no teacher librarian or less than one Full Time Equivalent (FTE) working in their school library. After the Northern Territory (5%), Tasmania (50%), Western Australia (almost 60%) and Victoria (65%) have the lowest number of TLs employed K-12 across all sectors. Instead there are high numbers of library technicians in Tasmania and Victoria and library officers in Western Australia.

Previous state surveys illustrate the downward slide. A discussion paper from the State Library of Tasmania noted a decline of nearly fifty per cent in the number of teacher librarians in Tasmanian schools in the period 1996-2000. (“Enhancing Student Outcomes with Improved Information Services and Provisioning”, 2000).

A position paper by the AEU Tasmanian Branch noted in 2000 that teacher aides were increasingly replacing teacher librarians, with one third of schools surveyed not having professional TLs. (“Leading the way: The changing role of the teacher librarian”). The ASLRP survey now places this at almost 50%.

While the ASLRP survey shows Victoria employs TLs in 65% of its schools, figures for Melbourne metropolitan primary schools may be even lower.   Reynolds and Carroll in 2001 found  that only 13% of primary schools had teacher librarians. (“Where have all the teacher librarians gone?” Access May 2001)

In South Australia in 2002, apart from those very small schools with no teacher librarian entitlement, a third of school libraries around the state were understaffed and/or staffed with unqualified personnel (Spence, “Survey highlights major problems with library staffing”, AEU Journal, 4 December 2002).

As Michelle Lonsdale stated in 2003, the “devolution of financial management to schools means that funding for school libraries relies on the resource allocation priorities established by the school community, which might or might not place a high priority on the need for a well-staffed library system.”  (Impact of school libraries on student achievement, ACER). There is pressure in all state departments of education for this devolution, flexibility and choice in school staffing. Teacher librarians, where they have existed, are often being “cashed in” for classroom or other specialist teachers, or pushed increasingly into the classroom themselves.

In 1988, the Australian Library Summit deplored the lack of statistics relating to school library services. There is still no systematically collected national data. ALIA and ASLA together with ECU have given us the beginning of those statistics to work with. The ASLRP has provided a complex set of results, with many variables yet to be analysed, but little in it paints a good picture of the state of school libraries in this country, especially government schools.

Anne Hazell stated in 1988, after the initial regression of the 1980s in school library staffing, that unless (TLs) … act as advocates for their chosen profession, it is unlikely that the profession will survive into the 21^st century.”   We are well and truly on that edge.

So, here is a preview of The Hub’s conference paper, Getting the Word Out.

Support Indigenous Literacy in NT schools by staffing them with TLs

It can’t hurt Indigenous Literacy Day that they have the Prime Minister’s wife as a patron.  I wonder if she knows how poorly off school libraries are in the NT?

95% of NT schools have NO school librarians!  which may go a long way towards explaining illiteracy.

Most schools in the NT have budget of less than $1000 per year for their libraries.

School library collections in NT remote schools (the majority) do not have a large range of resources often used to develop pre-reading skills such as  big books, games, puzzles, posters and charts. Students in these schools do not have access to magazines, maps,  or newspapers which are especially useful for reluctant readers (often boys) and teenage readers.

Nearly half the schools in the NT do not have access to traditional learning technologies such as videos, DVDs, CDs and CD-ROMs.

So is it any wonder that we must try to do something to help indigenous students to learn to read?

Our own local teacher librarians group did its bit by purchasing donated books of local children’s literature reviewer, Dr. Kerry White (The Source).  The book sale that kicked off at the Illawarra School Librarians Association meeting on 2 July at Wollongong Public School finished with almost $2000 raised for the Indigenous Literacy Project, http://www.worldwithoutbooks.org/.

We can also help by supporting our colleagues in the NT in lobbying federal members regarding staffing and resourcing of school libraries there.  They have written to their local minister of education:

The Australian School Libraries Association: Northern Territory Branch (ASLA NT) wishes to bring to your attention the growing trend towards the removal of teacher librarian positions in many schools in the Northern Territory.  We are very concerned about the negative impact this trend will have on student learning.

Let’s support them with a message to our local federal members to let them know there are many ways we can support indigenous literacy. The most significant one would be by resourcing quality school libraries staffed by certified teacher librarians.

Tell them that studies in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK have provided strong evidence that school libraries with certified teacher librarians can have a positive impact on student literacy and learning (Jones 2007, Lance 2000, 2002, etc., Small 2008, Todd 2003, and others). These are some of the findings: Student reading scores increase. Students read more. Students say they enjoy reading more. Students are provided with “materials that present more diverse points of view and that better support the curriculum.” Students score higher in (US) English Language Arts tests. Students have increased cultural identity. Collections of print and digital resources to support teaching and learning are more dynamic. Students value teacher librarians as teachers, when they are helped to become independent critical information seekers. (Further reading at http://hubinfo.wordpress.com/background/research/)

Indigenous Literacy Day?

A good day to write a letter!!  Perhaps project manager, Karen Williams  karen@indigenousliteracyproject.org.au would also forward a letter to patron Therese Rein (I don’t suppose anyone would have her email address?).  Perhaps Ms Rein could gain someone’s ear to support our colleagues in the Northern Territory in making sure every school has a well-resourced library and a teacher librarian to support indigenous literacy.

Cheers,

Georgia