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Book to close on school libraries?
A library is compulsory in a prison, but not in a school. There is a fear that school libraries could become victims of cost-cutting. Stuart Robinson talks to the librarian at one Leeds school backing a campaign to protect a precious educational resource
FOR most of us, spending time searching through packed library shelves for the perfect book to read was as much a cornerstone school life as learning your times tables or doing the dreaded physics homework.
But the much-loved school library could be in danger or disappearing because of a little-known lack of legal protection.
It may seem unreal, but the scenario could easily become reality because, while it's a legal requirement for every prison to have a library, there is no legal obligation for schools to have the same.
That means it is down to individual headteachers whether they want their school to have a library or not.
It is this frightening lack of protection which has already seen thousands of people sign up to a campaign to get the Government to recognise in law the need for kids to have access to a library in school.
For Anne Walker, librarian at Allerton High School in Leeds and staunch campaign supporter, the idea of a school without a library is unthinkable.
Sitting in the school's own modern facility, surrounded by its 10,000 books, she told the YEP: "I don't think most people are aware about the lack of protection and that's one of the things the campaign really has to do, to raise public awareness because I think people are quite shocked when they realise how vulnerable school libraries are.
"I think the fact that a school library can just disappear so quickly without any real questions being asked is something people should realise so they don't take school library provision for granted and if we want to ensure that our children have access to school libraries, we need to protect them with legislation.
"When I heard that libraries were compulsory for prisons but not schools, it really galvanised me. The campaign totally supports the right of prisoners to have access to books but we want those same rights for young people."
The campaign is being spearheaded by noted children's author and Blue Peter Book Award winner Alan Gibbons. He told the YEP: "Prisoners rightly have the statutory right to a library. Films such as The Shawshank Redemption fictionalise the basic human right to read for pleasure, information and education. Our Campaign believes this should be extended to schoolchildren. Half our secondary schools are unable to provide a properly staffed school library. When reading is such a vital skill this is a terrible omission."
The campaign to save school libraries was sparked by the decision to axe a library at a school in Chesterfield.
Despite protests from parents and pupils, which included a petition, the library was closed and the librarian made redundant, which brought the lack of statutory protection, and what having no library would mean for children, into sharp focus.
Anne, who has worked at Allerton High for the past seven years, said: "If you close a library, if you throw away 10,000 books, you're not ever going to replace that because the cost of restocking would be so high.
"The reasons behind closing a school library are primarily cost cutting or using the space for something else – which are not positive things educationally.
She added: "School libraries are ideally placed to give access to books and acquire the reading skills they need for higher education.
"When students go to university, they will have to go to libraries for research and reference and they should have experience of how a library works."
Anne concedes that the perception of school libraries as being expendable could stem from the misguided idea that they have become an educational relic in the dawn of computer-based learning.
In fact, she says, the opposite is true, with libraries more popular than ever before and keen to marry the use of books with computers and the latest technology.
She said: "The internet and IT are hugely important but they can't do everything and the school library is specifically resourced to support the learning that goes on in the school with
text books and reference books and many of those are tailored to children learning at different levels."
At Allerton, books and computers work in harmony, with computer access provided for pupils within the library alongside the stock of fiction and reference books.
And despite the seemingly endless range of toys and computer games on offer to youngsters today, Anne insists the library at the school is more popular than ever, with pupils packing in at break times and after school, still as keen to explore the latest works of fiction as children always have been.
She said: "One of the key thing about the campaign is how strongly we advocate reading for pleasure among children and the school library can play a really important role in creating a culture of reading within the school. If we get rid of the school library then it takes away children's opportunity to do that.
"A school library is the ideal place to foster a love of reading by allowing young people the freedom to browse for books and to select something that appeals to them, whether it's fact or fiction.
" And we shouldn't underestimate the value of reading for pleasure, it benefits children many ways: nourishing imaginations and developing thinking as well as improving reading proficiency.
"And research shows that reading for pleasure has a positive effect on academic achievement.
"Children will often come to me and ask if we can get the latest books in and they really respond to it when we do."
Anne says those in the corridors of power have thus far seemed unwilling to make libraries a statutory requirement in schools, citing a desire to allow headteachers to make their own decisions. And the alternative offered up would be for children to instead use a local public library, an idea Anne dismisses as unrealistic.
She said: "Using public libraries is not a real alternative, schools and public libraries provide a completely different service.
"A school library is used constantly throughout the day. It's completely unrealistic to think that children could access the public library in the same way during a school day."
Of course the crucial opinion is that of the youngsters who would face being without a library.
Allerton High pupils Aoifa O'Connor and Rona Ankrah, both 11, said that school life without a library just would not be the same.
Aoifa said: "I enjoy reading a lot and there are always different books for different things.
"You can use them for finding out things for school work and I've found out what fiction books I like from coming to the school library. I don't think I'd read as much if it wasn't here"
Rona added: "If there was no school library, I wouldn't have anything to do at break times and if we wanted to find out something it would be a lot harder."
Anne urged parents and concerned people to sign up to a petition to the government to make school libraries compulsory by law.
The campaign hopes to collect thousands more names to put on as much pressure as possible.
Sign up at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/literacy/
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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