School libraries are vital for kids’ learning. Can they be saved?

The school library is endangered, right across the nation, and just as literacy levels are falling. Picture: istock

When you think of your school library, what memories do you have? Sanctuary, study hub, nest of flirtation, wonder room, nook. To me, the library is a vital resource within a school environment. A circuit breaker amid the relentless rhythm of the day, where a child can slip into a calmer, more contemplative mode. It’s room as rescue, for the bullied and the introverted. Haven, harbour, to retreat from the toss of the world.

But the school library is endangered, right across the nation, and just as literacy levels are falling. Our children aren’t reading nearly as much. A correlation, I’m sure. The grim truth: the humble school library is becoming a diminished species just when we need it most. All over Australia these hallowed spaces are being colonised for new classrooms, budgets are being slashed and the librarian’s unique role is being downgraded. It’s a tragedy for our future readers, for all our children, especially in lower socio-economic areas.

Meanwhile, last year’s Naplan results showed a shocking 13.5 per cent of Year 9 students didn’t reach a national minimum standard for reading – compared to fewer than 8.5 per cent in 2008. It’s an alarming decline. We know that during Covid more than a quarter of school libraries had their staff and budgets cut. The best people to staff them are teacher librarians but their numbers are falling to critically low levels. Experts consider these highly trained educators as vital to school literacy outcomes, but principals are ever mindful of budgets. They’re replacing the best qualified with cheaper library “assistants” and “officers”. Some have no educational training.

“We have fewer trained people, we have fewer libraries with high quality staff,” explains Dr Susan La Marca, executive officer of the School Library Association of Victoria and a teacher-librarian herself. “I can’t tell you how many people have been taken out of the library because there aren’t enough teachers … We continue to hear sad stories about libraries not operating because they’ve no longer got staff, or there’s not enough money to purchase a really good collection.”

A library is a space that arrests time, dragging you into its rich, multi-faceted depths and holding you captive.

My own childhood is soaked through with memories of these chapels of books. The joy of “Library Day” at school, bookbags, and librarians presiding over their empires of thought. The exhilaration of the Bookmobile – a library on wheels, and the wonder of entering its tubular depths. I can still recall the grain of the school library desks where I studied for my leaving exams; wider and more excitingly adult than the meagre classroom desks. Still recall the thrill of borrowing vaguely illicit books from my local library – Flowers in the Attic (for thrills), Sybil (for wonder), The Thorn Birds (for sex education because, alas, the nuns weren’t quite comprehensive enough.)

The best are fighting back. Innovative school librarians are transforming their spaces into workshop hubs, tech training rooms, coding spaces, student art galleries, gathering places for author talks, debating clubs. A library is a space that arrests time, dragging you into its rich, multi-faceted depths and holding you captive. There should be a recognition among all educators that these temples of the written word need to be cherished, modernised and protected. They fulfil a necessary function in our increasingly rushed, anxious and alienating world.

Out in adult-land, suburban libraries are innovating. They’re becoming sanctuaries of thought, places to pause in the mad rush of life, little coracles of solace among the magazine racks, office hubs for freelancing workers, gathering places for teens studying for exams.

A library has always been a well of deep, deep peace. A place of exhalation. The library is disappearing from too many of our schools and that’s a tragedy not just for our education system and literacy levels, but for the youngest among us – who won’t be growing up with this precious resource.