Which parties support school libraries?

NSW Greens

Send an email to the candidates in your electoral district. [checklist] See attachments for draft questions & briefing notes. You could also include a case study. Proposal presented to Greens for policy consideration http://attachments.wetpaintserv.us/80lHdIIfdB0jXn$Oa7MabQ==78848

25/02/07

To public primary and secondary school members,

I am working for the Greens in this election campaign and have just presented the above proposal for policy consideration. It is a bit late to go through the process of adding to their education policy at the moment, but it has received considerable favor at yesterday's State Delegate's Council meeting in Newcastle, which I attended. The next policy working group meeting can work on incorporating these staffing and funding issues when they meet next, which will be after the election. Meanwhile, John Kaye, Greens education spokeman, would like to issue some media releases highlighting the problems of RFF, clerical staffing, funding, support services, and pre-service training of teachers in information literacy, the role of the teacher-librarian and CPT.

It would greatly strengthen our "story" for the media, if we had specific case studies to refer to. I am asking you to get in touch with me personally, not to the listserv generally if you don't wish,
to describe

• decreases in library funding in recent years,
• decreases in library clerical hours or
• deployment of untrained clericals to the library,
• the difficulties of teaching information skills in an integrated, collaborative, best practice method under current practices of using the TL for RFF,
• the sparcity of central and regional school library support services and consultants,
• and the lack of understanding of the TL role by staff.

As highlighted in the NSW Primary Principal's Association statement in support of school libraries, they have ever more difficult choices to make regarding staffing and funding. As Maggie Roche and others have indicated on the NSWTL website, from which most of my proposal
comes, they should not be forced to make these choices. It is possible that principals themselves would like to describe these difficulties, and I would be particularly happy to hear from them also. Otherwise, it may be possible to use examples without mentioning names or names of schools.

This proposal is likely to go on to the national Greens education working group also.

It would be wonderful if a similar proposal could be addressed also to the other parties before the election, should anyone be able to do so. The sooner I might hear from you the better. We have four weeks to go.

Hoping to hear from you,
Georgia Phillips [mailto:gphillip at bigpond.net.au]