Is there a future for school libraries in Australia?

Posted by G. Phillips

The six states and two territories of Australia all have developed different staffing formulas which affect the way teacher librarians are placed in schools.

Victoria has put staffing directly into the hands of school principals. Principals are given a staffing budget and determine ultimately who will be hired. The school determines its own staffing priorities within that budget. Many schools in Victoria are without qualified teacher librarians.

SA has a staffing allocation at the moment in place since 1999. It places up to one full time TL in schools up to 500 students; 1.5 in schools to 650, and 2 TLs in schools over 650 students.

In South Australia, the state government wants to change the current teaching agreement which will dramatically affect teacher librarians. It wants to change the staffing formula allocation to the schools being funded “per student”. Schools would make local decisions about the numbers of teachers, executive positions and other staff in a school based on the ‘budget’ available for the school, placing staffing in the hands of principals.

NSW primary schools base TL staffing on number of students up to 170 (up to .4 TL), then the formula is based on the number of teachers, up to one full time TL in schools up to 18 teachers. Secondary schools have one full time TL for up to 1200 students, with increased staffing as enrollment increases.

According to the NSW Teachers Federation, the NSW government also wishes to put staffing in the hands of school principals.

With severe teacher shortages, the previous Western Australian government asked schools to identify all work currently performed by teachers which could be performed by public servants. As a consequence, teacher librarians would be at risk of being replaced by librarians without teacher qualifications and presumably paid at a cheaper rate.

Fortunately, the recent change of government in WA has seemed to put this off the agenda at the moment.

So, is there a future for teacher librarians?

Only if there is a demand for teacher librarians from parents, from unions, and from principals, because they know that teacher librarians can make a difference to student literacy and academic achievement.

Who will tell them?

Not a good news week

It hasn’t been good news for school libraries around Australia in the last week.  First we hear of South Australia’s Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS) enterprise bargaining which threatens to implement full time face-to-face teaching loads for teacher librarians.  Then we read this story in The West Australian in which teacher librarians are set to be moved from their “non teaching” role to classroom positions. (what do TLs have to say about being described as “non-teaching”?)

Now we realise there’s a teacher shortage, so something has to change, but I have a different solution.  Let’s get rid of history.  Then all the history teachers can be used to make up the shortfall.  It’s not a very useful subject, and the only students who find it helpful are those who want to be history teachers, so it’s a win-win situation.

I could be wrong, but should this decision ever be made in an Australian state, I predict it would attract significant media attention, with criticism from all sides. Yet the redistribution of TLs is on the cards with barely a (media) whimper, despite the best efforts of the associations and unions.

One hubber makes the astute observation that the largest number of non-teaching teachers in schools may well be the principals and their deputies.  Perhaps that’s the answer?

This week we read of Victorian education minister Bronywn Pike’s plan to improve performance in low performing schools.  Send in relatively unqualified novices!  Genius or madness?  I suggest it fails to recognise many of the qualities that great teachers possess.  It’s fashioned on two overseas models, but I don’t know if there’s much evidence that it actually works. Meanwhile, the overwhelming evidence that libraries make a difference continues to be ignored. Victorians might like to pen a letter to Ms Pike this week, as I will be. In the meantime, I managed to get a few words in today’s Age newspaper.