Letters to the Editor: School libraries need backing
Education Minister Norma Foley said that providing a librarian in each school would cost €212m. Picture: iStock
Responding to a Parliamentary Question this week on the cost of restoring the school libraries fund, Education Minister Norma Foley quoted an extraordinarily prohibitive figure, and cited a curious list of expenses.
The minister declared that providing a librarian in each school would cost an estimated €212m, citing “physical space, fixtures and fittings, IT facilities, librarian assistants, stock (physical and digital), national co-ordinator, professional development etc”.
We were perplexed to hear the minister factoring in the provision of library assistants. School libraries are generally run by one qualified librarian, but empower a team of library assistants from the student body. This is a superb opportunity for students to gain experience of customer service, computer software and project management, and it is entirely free.
Her reference to professional development is equally mystifying. Librarians generally pay for their own professional development, completing a degree, diploma or master’s, and pursuing further training under the auspices of various professional bodies at their own expense.
The minster’s response looks a lot like a figleaf to cover long-standing inaction. Instead of working towards a realistic cost-effective solution, she presents a pie-in-the-sky figure to rationalise continued neglect of this crucial aspect of our education system.
We in the school libraries group of the Library Association of Ireland reiterate our realistic and concrete demand; the minister must, at long last, fulfil the department’s 2005 commitment to extend the Junior Certificate School Programme Demonstration Library Project to all Deis schools. Recent joint Oireachtas committee reports have identified this as “an urgent national priority”. The groundbreaking benefits that school libraries confer upon students from deprived backgrounds are available in only 30 out of 235 Deis schools.
The minister need not worry — the library assistants will step up!
The Oireachtas question of Sorca Clark TD to Education Minister Norma Foley (Q 278, April 16) about school library funding elicits some interesting comment from the minister in her written reply. It is obvious from the minister’s “estimated additional costing” that she has a poor understanding of the realities of such provision. This forum does not allow me the space to address the aspects of her costing that I take issue with. Permit me, however, to respond to some of the other points in the minister’s reply.
The one-off €20m (€21 per student in free scheme) made available in 2022 for books and reading materials is of little benefit in schools if there is not a librarian or teacher on staff who facilitates full-time student access to materials purchased.
The most recent research on school library provision in Ireland, co-authored by the under-signed and published in 2023 (reported on in these pages by your Education Correspondent Jess Casey, June 5, 2023) shows that the level of engagement by schools with the Public Library Supports for Schools Initiative is very low, hence raising the question of the benefits and effectiveness in real terms of the initiative that the minister is touting.
While the department guidelines for the 2024/2025 school book scheme for Junior Cycle in post-primary schools do state that schools have the autonomy to use any surplus funding “for additional classroom resources”, how likely is it that schools will opt to spend it on library and reading resources when the above-mentioned 2023 study shows that in only 20% of the surveyed schools was in-school management identified as the primary driving force behind provision of the library.
The Department of Education seems to be unaware of the many benefits of school libraries (including for literacy, reading, academic achievement, information skills and personal development) and Ireland is an outlier among developed countries worldwide in regard to school library provision.
May I respectfully suggest that the minister include an informed examination of the internationally long-recognised and widely accepted benefits of school libraries as a central part of the “robust research” she mentions in planning for the next Literacy, Numeracy and Digital Literacy Strategy.
It is very difficult to understand how she could ignore the case for library provision in all schools in line with best practice worldwide.
Forty per cent of the electorate in Northern Ireland are young, progressive, modernising, non-aligned, opposed to sectarianism, or a mixture of the five.
I studied constitutional law for many years. I’m no genius. But I’m not a dummy either. The encomia continually delivered to us by the political class on the quality and tenability of the 1998 Belfast Agreement Settlement continue to baffle and annoy me in equal measure. It is a recipe for polarisation. Sinn Féin and the DUP can collapse parliamentary activity in Northern Ireland any time they want.
A parliament that does not sit is a glorified Dole Office for divisive sectarian antediluvian politicians. The Belfast Agreement is in urgent need of modification. Northern Ireland is a proud place with a proud history of innovation, modernisation and progress that goes back to the 19th century. It is now trapped in a kind of political aspic. Lough Neagh is becoming a sewer. The brightest and best are still planning their futures somewhere else.
The “peace walls” are as high as they have ever been. The centre is being smothered in its cradle by this “sacred cow” our political class refer to as the Good Friday Agreement.
This is not peace. It is a nervous truce between the future and the past. Forty per cent of Northern Ireland’s electorate are being relegated and procedurally sedated by this pot-holed pseudo-constitutional “peace agreement”.
Stasis is easy. Progress is hard. Let’s start doing the hard thing.
I see that the annual %This link goes to facebook%Darkness into Light walk is coming up. It’s never a bad time to highlight the tragedy of suicide, because that’s what it is for everyone … the person who opts to “end it all” and the many people who’ll be devastated by the sudden unexpected loss … the grief that never goes away.
With so much awfulness in the world, it’s understandable that ending one’s own life might seem to be the only way out … or the best way out, of this world: Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, endless talk about climate change … cosmic gloom and doom all around … the housing and homelessness crises in Ireland, the cost of living, and the age-old challenges to our quality of life such as bullying, depression, addictions, exam worries, debt, failed relationships, and abruptly ended friendships.
But there’s hope too, and help for anyone, without exception, who reaches out. Debt can be managed or got around; bullying can be tackled once the victim (regardless of age) shares his or her ordeal. There’s help for even the deepest, darkest depression. Nobody need be alone in facing the “slings and arrows” of life. A trouble shared is more than halved.
The key to avoiding an early and unnecessary exit from this world is simply to pick up the phone, or talk to a friend.
Studies show that the majority of people who had near-death experiences after attempting suicide were relieved afterwards that the attempt failed, and near-death experiences have been cited by many researchers as evidence of an afterlife. Whatever about this claim, I believe there is certainly a strong case to be made for life before death!
The big D comes to all someday, but I reckon that life on this flawed but also in so many ways beautiful planet is worth living…while we’re here. Help or support for anyone afflicted by thoughts of suicide is never far away.
Just reach out!
This article Diary of a Gen Z Student (‘Listen up, anyone over 30 — stop using full stops in texts’) has made the rounds on Facebook. The response has been what you might expect from people 35 and up. I am one of those people. I just wanted to post one of the best responses (not mine but the author gave me clearance to send this to the ). Aside from the 20-something writer’s arrogance I agree with the post about wanting to be the bridge — but building a wall instead.
“I really tried to read the full article. I couldn’t cope with all the full stops in it!!!”
I love that language evolves, but she’s just insulting us, and pre-emptively accusing us of insulting her, while waffling on about how she is the bridge between two generations (seems like the hard time she spent in school didn’t include learning self-awareness, as she actually erects a wall), while the evolution of communication shouldn’t need instructions, but happen gradually and organically (possibly without causing offence, as this will shut the door instead of opening it).
Rant over. Full stop. – AR Paoletti
