Cutting school librarians is a clear threat to pupils’ support systems

Back in the autumn of 2023, just a couple of months after leaving teaching and while still trying to get my head around my new role as a full-time journalist, I paid a visit to Orkney.

It was a fantastic trip, and I was privileged to get to spend several days exploring various aspects of the unique Orcadian education system. During my time on the archipelago I visited some beautiful places, learned about some fascinating projects, and above all met some truly wonderful people. 

One of the most welcoming, and interesting, was Frances Sinclair, the school librarian at Stromness Academy.

Before I had even set foot in her library I had heard staff raving about the work she did, and by the time I left, her contribution to the education, and wellbeing, of pupils at Stromness was obvious.

But she was by no means the only school librarian having that sort of impact.

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As many of us remember from our own adolescence, school librarians are the all too often unsung heroes of Scottish education.

From my own experience, I can tell you that teachers hugely appreciate the work of school librarians because they see first hand the impact that they have both on young people and on the wider school. In my early years of teaching, Heather Johnstone, the librarian at Arran High School, was a lifeline on more than one occasion.

From the outside, it might be difficult to appreciate just how much a good librarian enhances the quality of education available to young people, but for those on the inside the impact is unmissable – the loss of these professionals has a major detrimental impact that goes far beyond the bookshelves of the library itself, and it’s the poorest pupils who experience the worst effects. 

For many pupils, especially those for whom school is a particularly difficult period in their lives, the school library – and the librarian overseeing it – provides a sense of solace and belonging that make an incredibly challenging experience bearable.

I have spoken to people who do not think they would still be here today were it not for their school librarian, without whom even a well-stocked library is just a big room full of books.

But what happens when all of that starts to disappear?

You might think that a school library, and a qualified librarian, are together an obviously essential component of a proper education system - at least in secondary schools.

And you would be entirely correct, but that doesn’t seem to matter, and it certainly hasn’t saved them from horrendous cuts.

I have previously investigated the situation with school libraries across Scotland, using FOI requests to every council, and asking not just about the physical spaces that were in use but also the level of staffing in place around them.

My investigation confirmed that 40% of primary schools had no library, and that 99% had no librarian. In fact, just two primary schools in the entire country reported that they had a full-time librarian. Not 2%. Two schools.

At secondary level the overwhelming majority of schools said that they did have a space that was referred to as a library (although 18 did not) but fewer than half had a full-time librarian and more than one in 10 had no librarian at all.

And that was nearly a decade ago. Since then, council budgets have been squeezed ever-tighter, and the situation has definitely deteriorated.

Some cuts have been high profile, like SNP-run Glasgow City Council deciding to scrap all school-based librarians in order to replace them with cheaper staff, or SNP-run North Ayrshire Council doing the same thing. Others have slipped under the radar, but they all mean the same thing: councils decided that children weren’t important enough to warrant investment in school libraries and librarians.

Cutting school librarians is a clear threat to pupils’ support systems: "My investigation confirmed that 40% of primary schools had no library, and that 99% had no librarian," says James McEnaney

A recent report produced by Scottish Book Trust in conjunction with the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland (CILIPS) found that in recent years library budgets have been restricted, hours have been cut, and even the dedicated nature of library spaces has been attacked.

The consequences have been very real: if you’re wondering why literacy levels aren’t improving faster, or why the attainment gap for school leavers has grown, then you can probably safely assume that the loss of school librarians is part of the overall picture.

But don’t worry, because it seems the government has recognised the need for action and decided to do something. It turns out that they do believe that “strong school library services staffed by professional librarians are crucial assets in Scotland’s education system”, and that “they should continue to play a central role in supporting equity, attainment and wellbeing.”

So, are we getting a clear manifesto commitment for major reforms, such as the promise to massively expand childcare provision? We’re being told that another SNP government will ensure that services are available from nine months until the end of primary school, and that this will be in operation all year round. Are we getting a similar sort of pledge for libraries and librarians? Well, not quite.

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OK, but is there confirmation that they’ll make a major investment, like they did with the recent announcement that school strikes have been averted? That win was secured through a promise to pay an as-yet-unspecified sum likely to be in the hundreds of millions of pounds, with an immediate £40m sweetener for councils thrown into the bargain. Is that sort of thing happening here? Of course not.

What we’ve actually got is a loose plan to work towards a ‘refreshed national strategy’ alongside various other organisations.

That’s it. No real promises. No actual commitments. No guarantees of anything whatsoever.

After years of clear and obvious decline, we got a ‘statement of intent’.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, did I mention there’s an election happening in the next several weeks?