20 June 2011 www.educationreview.com.au

20 OPINION

More than 380 submissions, 12 hearings and 100 witnesses informed the report of the Inquiry into School Libraries and Teacher

Librarians, which was tabled in parliament on May 23.

Primarily, the report acknowledges the diverse role and skills of the 21st century teacher librarian (TL), and “the valuable work that teacher librarians are doing in respect of e-learning in their schools, including those that highlight their leadership capacity”.

MP Sharon Bird helped initiate the inquiry in response to a petition from our national lobby group, The Hub. Bird, a former secondary teacher herself, has stated: “It is important to acknowledge that the dual qualification of a teacher librarian – the teaching qualification, which helps them to understand the pedagogy, the curriculum and the developmental issues with the young people that they are working with, combined with the library qualification, which gives them the expertise in information management and assessment – is a unique combination that is invaluable in a school.”

The committee stated that “research demonstrates a clear correlation between a good school library and teacher librarian and student achievement”. It has included clear summaries of this extensive research. This supports our aim “to ensure that every young Australian becomes a successful lifelong learner who is confident and capable of active and informed participation in Australia’s future”.

Commonwealth versus state responsibilities States and territories hold the authority over government school staffing and funding, including school libraries. The committee therefore sought recommendations which could

Protecting anendangered species

The recent parliamentary inquiry report reaffirms the importance of teacher librarians in our schools, but its recommendations fall short, writes Georgia Phillips.

fall within federal parameters. Half of the eleven recommendations can

be implemented federally and at relatively small cost. The other half are dependent on the minister of education initiating, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA), a dialogue with the relevant authorities.

The “easier” recommendations include funding for equitable access to online data bases, a National Year of Reading, a national Digital and Information Literacy policy, Australian research into links between school library programs and student literacy and academic achievement and workforce data collection.

Data collection The committee recommends a “workforce gap analysis” because surveys have indicated that as many as 3000 TL positions nationwide could be filled with qualified professionals. It asks that statistics on specialist teachers, including counsellors and teacher librarians, should also be included on the My School website. The Hub believes if qualifications and scheduled time in the library are included, these could help clarify the state of our profession. State and territory governments would have to commit to collection. The NT, Tasmania, and Queensland departments of education (DETs) all admitted, at their respective hearings, they do not have this data and Victoria, South Australia and the ACT DETs would not appear as witnesses at the inquiry. Data collection would also reveal the extent of the inequality in staffing levels and qualifications, across states and across sectors. “The independent schools are generally better staffed than government schools,” the report notes.

Submissions which included findings

in the last decade, but not quoted directly in the report, identified 10 to 15 per cent of Queensland government schools do not have qualified teacher librarians, 23 per cent in SA, 50 per cent in the ACT, 67 per cent in Tasmania, 90 per cent in WA, and 95 per cent of government schools in the NT. While NSW still mandates TL staffing in all government schools, The Hub has new information which suggests that while NSW theoretically staffs qualified TLs in all schools, there could be dozens of unfilled positions or positions filled by untrained teachers, some of this due to national partnership agreements.

While data is unavailable for the independent and systemic sectors, the report s states the independent sector “appears to regard teacher librarians highly with well resourced, professionally staffed library resource centres a real drawcard…They tie academic achievement very closely to literacy and numeracy and to a well stocked, well-staffed library”.

The crucial needs of national guidelines, training, funding, structures and the TL role in the national curriculum, however, have been left in limbo.

National guidelinesNew national guidelines to develop excellent 21st century school libraries are not included in the recommendations, except to say a dialogue is needed. That should have happened before 2650 new Building the Education Revolution (BER) libraries were built. The Australian School Library Association (ASLA) told the committee “that a motherhood statement at the Commonwealth level would be useful because it would flow through to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and help set the direction, providing a framework for the deployment of appropriate resources and funding to schools”.

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OPINION 21

National guidelines would also inform groups such as the Teaching for the Digital Age Advisory Group, Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AISTL), MYCEECDYA, and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), as well as other education authorities and sectors.

TrainingThe Committee recommends that the education minister, through MYCEECDYA, establish a national dialogue on the role and training needs of teacher librarians. Tertiary institutions have dropped courses as principals have been forced, due to budgetary constraints, to drop teacher librarians. Now many principals cannot find qualified TLs to hire. The federal government must act now to ensure adequate numbers of teacher librarians. Charles Sturt University, the largest TL trainer, graduates 100 per year. Will the education community have to wait 30 years or more until there are sufficient TLs to meet the need? What about all the TLs who are retiring? Federal scholarships could be offered now, as in the NSW Department of Education and Brisbane Catholic Education and as has recently occurred with Early Childhood Education.

At the least, AISTL could look now at the inclusion of information skills and collaborative teaching methodologies in tertiary education courses. This could better inform teaching as well as attract pre-service teachers to the TL profession.

Funding The issue of funding is also sidelined in the report. Since the 2008 Council of Australian Governments’ intergovernmental agreement, federal funding has been handed over to states and territories “providing them with increased flexibility”, the report notes. ASLA had suggested that “the ministers of education establish a formula for funding the resource collection of school libraries Australia-wide based on a minimum per-capita amount and negotiate with Governments to commit to meeting a national funding agreement for school libraries on an annual basis”. However, this recommendation was not included in the report.

National curriculumThe report could also have recommended that ACARA and the national curriculum acknowledge the role of teacher librarians in resource-based inquiry learning and collaboration, a part of best practice teaching. Such pedagogy needs to be better addressed.

Structures Omitted also is the suggestion for the establishment of a unit within DEEWR to coordinate the outcomes of the inquiry. The establishment of policies and benchmarks for 21st century learning skills to move forward has also been ignored. Instead, the committee recommends that MCEECDYA “discuss ways to enhance partnerships with state and territory and local

levels of government to support school libraries and teacher librarians”. A central authority could hasten full implementation of the recommendations.

The report covers many more related issues including resourcing remote schools, support staffing in school libraries, joint-use libraries, cyber safety, gifted education and the role and characteristics of excellent teacher librarians.

The Hub is greatly encouraged by the committee’s efforts to address this complex issue so crucial to effective quality teaching and learning in Australia’s schools. It has made many recommendations that can be taken up by the government. While we understand the nature of current federal-state relationships, and understand the committee’s reluctance to impose on state authorities, stronger action could have been recommended. As academic, Lyn Hay, has stated: “We are at a critical turning point. We need to ‘re-engineer’ a number of existing school libraries into flexible, dynamic, ‘high-tech’ learning centres designed to prepare students to function effectively in an increasingly complex informational and technological world. But this will depend on having sufficient teacher librarians to undertake a leadership role in the school – someone with the skills and leadership to make this vision happen.” n

Georgia Phillips, is an adjunct lecturer at Charles Sturt University, and co-founder of The Hub. The full report can be found at www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ee/schoollibraries/report.htm. The Hub is at http://hubinfo.wordpress.com