Lyn Hay Star Witness:-) 3 June Inquiry Hearing

Today Lyn Hay, Charles Sturt University Lecturer,  was the “star witness” to answer questions from the committee of Inquiry into School Libraries and Teacher Librarians in Canberra. CSU is the last of three institutions training TLs in Australia, and has the greatest intake.

Lyn was very good, as you would have expected, providing lots of graphed info on CSU TL student intake and grads over the years in terms of age, gender, pathways into course, where students come from.  Hope this handout will be made available.

Sharon Bird, Dr. Sharman Stone (Liberal Vic), Mike Symon (Labor Vic), Dr Dennis Jensen (Lib WA) from the House Committee on Education and Training were the ones I heard ask questions.

They were interested in:

Recruitment – especially how to get the under late 30s-40s interested in entering the profession and why they aren’t entering the course.  Lyn told them there are no longer any undergraduate programs. The last disappeared in the mid-90s. Dennis Jensen wanted to know why.  No real answer able to be given, but certainly involves image of TLs.

Collaborative teaching – why this is needed if all teachers are supposed to be able to teach IL.  Lyn spoke, of course, re the need for pre-service teacher ed on IL and collaboration with TLs, experienced TLs working with ed programs (Canberra did this) and did illustrate the value of teams in learning, esp from her research. (NB: I think we need to give more evidence to the committee re the value of collaborative teaching, not just with other specialist teachers, but with TLs in particular.)  They were very interested in the fact that Lyn’s research involves student feedback on the value of the TL and asked for the reference.

The effect of IT in changing the image of librarianship. Lyn made a good point about the importance of the library as the one open access (unlike irregularly staffed labs) facility in the school where students could access printers, software, internet, and help at time of need.

Mike Symon asked about the demand for trained TLs.  Where does it come from?  Lyn spoke about the diocese in northern Qld with 28 new libraries, yet no staffing formula for TLs. She spoke to a conference there about this and demand has grown. She mentioned the schools in Vic whose students are educationally disadvantaged by not having TLs.  (Where DOES it come from?  NSW, international schools, independent sector…..)

Relief from Face to Face (as it is called in NSW. Providing relief time for teachers) – Lyn stated this was not a smart use of an information professional, and locks teachers and their classes out of the library at time of need.  Collaboration in what TL teaches during RFF is at least a start. Principals can make or break a library service and the T/L, Lyn said.  Research on this since the 1930s.

Career pathways.  Sharman asked if there were ever TLs who became principals. Lyn gave an example (see info feedback via OZTLnet).

Repositioning TLs in terms of their image as leaders and their career pathways.  How can this be done?  This is the big challenge! (NB:Need to establish promotions position in schools for the information specialist.)

Lastly, Sharman asked about community-school libraries (NB: is in Alan Bundy’s sub, and is sure to be discussed at Adelaide hearing).  Lyn not in favour.  Difficulties when two funding bodies and so dependent on the individuals involved.  Regional students need targeted school library collections.

Again, important questions were asked by committee members who have done their homework and are looking for answers to guide recommendations.

Stay tuned for the next installment :

Canberra: Parliament House, Committee Room 1R6
Thursday 17 June 2010, 9.30am – 11.00am

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.

Is the federal government responsible?

The continuing argy bargy over who is responsible for school library staffing is beginning to grate.  How long can we allow the federal government to continue to fob us off with “Ensuring that there were trained librarians in libraries would therefore be a responsibility of the states “? (See latest response to questions on notice in the current Senate inquiry.) Let’s look at some examples of the way the federal government can influence staffing, and has in the past.

First, the federal government compiles national education and training statistics, to
 

“provide measures of the levels and outcomes of education and training activity. They are seen as key indicators of the well-being of society. The information is used by governments for purposes such as planning, budgeting, policy design, and program evaluation. The data are also used by providers of education and training, researchers, and community organisations.” (ABS on Education and Training)
 

Yet what planning can be made by these bodies when no statistics are collected on staffing levels, qualifications and number of graduates for teacher librarians?  This is clearly a federal responsibility.
 

The federal government has taken an active role in the development of national standards for teaching.  The teacher librarianship profession has responded admirably and Standards of professional excellence for teacher-librarians is frequently pointed out as a model to other teaching professions.

The federal government should now have the responsibility for the

• Inclusion of statements supporting the significant role of school libraries and teacher librarians in federal Education policy.
• Recognition of the significant role of school libraries and teacher librarians in federal Literacy and other Education initiatives.
• Federally funded research into the impact of Australian school libraries on the literacy skills and academic achievement of students at all levels and across all sectors.
• Development and validation of national standards for school library facilities and staffing.

(ASLA letter to then Opposition Leader, Federal Election 2007 and ALP response)

The federal government frequently prioritizes teacher training in specific areas.  Their latest initiative is to support childhood education teaching.
 

“The Government is committed to meeting the TAFE fees of people who want to become child care workers. We want people to be going into this industry. We want to encourage them to do so and we’ll be meeting their TAFE fees if that’s what they want to do. We’re also creating 1500 new places at Australian universities for early childhood teachers”. Julia Gillard , June 20, 2008.
 

So it is a federal responsibility to determine the necessary number of trained teacher librarians to staff every Australian school library, to  increase the number of teacher librarian courses (for example, to reintroduce a Graduate Diploma in Teacher Librarianship and broaden Graduate courses in teacher librarianship in South Australia) and to create places in these courses for TLs.
 

A recent email from a retired state school library consultant (yes, we had many of them once!) stated, “Whitlam was big for primary libraries and for training TLs. In 1974 selected secondary & primary librarians were seconded to tertiary institutions to undertake a year’s training. Kuring-gai CAE was … asked at short notice to design a course for primary TLs. It was still being designed when delivery began. From memory the first course for secondary TLs was at Newcastle, later transferred under Margaret Trask to Kuring-gai where it was still going on when I left in 1985. The initiative seemed to have come from the federal government….”

The federal government has frequently and continually tied state grants to conditions. Commonwealth funds for state school resources can and should be tied to established school library staffing standards to ensure professional selection, accountability and use of these resources.
 

So who is responsible for the state of our nation’s school libraries?  You be the judge.

21st Century School Libraries Need 21st Century TLs

I was possibly one of a few who caught the PM’s “fireside chat” announcing the latest economic stimulus package. Everyone else, including my husband, was rightly still at the beach.  And I surely was one of a small minority who let out a whoop when school libraries were mentioned!!  Now that the dog and I have settled down, memory nags.  Didn’t something like this happen back in the 70s?  Some 1200 new secondary libraries were built by 1977 with Commonwealth grants, following intense lobbying by ASLA, LAA (now ALIA), ALPC, state government and other groups and individuals. 

I can tell you it was an exciting time to be visiting new NSW school libraries armed with that powerful departmental furniture catalogue!!

Yet a survey of all state and territory supervisors of school libraries at that time found that by 1978 there were only some 3500 qualified (at least the equivalent of one term full-time training in school librarianship) teacher librarians in Australia, although 5000 more were needed to meet the standards outlined in the Schools Commission’s standards, Books and Beyond.  

Since then, no one is even keeping track.  The federal government can not tell you how many TLs there are in school libraries. How many “state and territory supervisors of school libraries” even exist anymore to ask? ALIA can not tell you how many TL graduates there are in Australia. ASLA can not tell you how many TLs are needed to be trained to staff Australia’s 6,853 (2007 figures) government schools to their professional standards. State departments of education don’t even distinguish between classroom teachers and teacher librarians in their staffing statistics. So they can’t tell you which schools have no teacher librarians, let alone what training their TLs might have.

Yet there IS anecdotal evidence and some preliminary data which shows that all too few Australian primary school libraries are staffed to professional standards. For example, possibly up to half the primary schools in Victoria do not have teacher librarians. The Northern Territory has very few professionally trained primary teacher librarians and none in remote schools, and government primary schools in Western Australia are not staffed with teacher librarians.

So we ask the question (updated) which was asked in the 1970s:

What use are 21st century primary school libraries if they are not staffed by 21st century teacher librarians?

Today might be a good day to ask a state senator (click for sample letter and suggested email addresses).

 

gp