A PLAN to use pupils to help run on-site libraries at Scotland's top-performing secondary schools has been scrapped following protests.
East Renfrewshire Council proposed the idea of involving senior-year pupils in certain duties, while aiming to make all librarians in its seven secondary schools part-time to save £131,000.
Now it has emerged that the move to involve pupils has been dumped although the council is still considering plans to reduce cover at the schools.
The council has confirmed it is still going to move from having seven full time school librarians to four, and that part-time posts are still in the equation.
Councillors suggested the initial plan as they sought to bridge a budget shortfall of £20 million over the next three years.
Three of the seven schools affected by the move, St Ninian's High School, Williamwood High School and Mearns Castle High School, came first, second and third in a nationwide league table based on state school Higher exam results published last year. Other schools that would be hit by the proposals were Eastwood High, Woodfarm High, St Luke's High and Barrhead High.
The council confirmed it would still be saving the money, and would be cutting librarian staffing from seven full time posts to four.
The pupil involvement plan was opposed by the Scottish arm of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the leading body representing the sector which described it as "the most extreme suggestion heard yet" for school library cost-cutting.
The suggestion had been made in the council's 2015 to 2018 budget book.
The document stated: "By identifying options to introduce self-service or to involve our senior year pupils on a voluntary basis in supporting the running of their school's library, we believe we are able to reduce the full-time dedicated librarian resource within each of our secondary schools and replace this with a part-time resource, without reducing the level of service."
Now the council is to have a rethink.
Louisa Mahon of East Renfrewshire Council said: "There are no proposals to have senior pupils involved in the running of the school library as volunteers or in any other capacity.
"We will be providing a reduced service in all seven schools. This will mean that the number of librarians will reduce - it could be that we will have fewer full time librarians who will work across different locations, rather than making all full time posts, part time.
"The saving will mean that there will not be a librarian in each school full time and one idea, of many put forward, was that senior pupils may want to volunteer in their library outwith the times a librarian was present. We do not intend to take this any further whatsoever. Pupils are off the table."
She said how the cuts to staff would be made still needs to be worked out and that "is part of the ongoing discussions with staff".
She added: "It could be four full time posts that work across seven schools, or it could be a number of part-time posts that add up to four full-time equivalents (FTEs).
"As we have a policy on no compulsory redundancy, we would be trying to achieve this through natural attrition or voluntary redundancy and this will dictate what the reduced service will look like.
"As a result of reducing the number of librarians, we will need to reduce operating hours of the school library. One way we could consider extending this would be the introduction of self serve. Again, this was an idea put forward to try to mitigate the impact of reduced operating hours. The detail has not been progressed.
"Self service is an option that we can introduce to support the service during times when a librarian is not on site so that pupils are still able to use the library.
CILIP in Scotland who were concerned about the initial plans said that only full-time, professionally qualified school librarians allow children and young people to develop the skills needed to be successful and participate fully in an information society.
The initial plans also raised a protest from the Society of Authors.
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