Survey of (UK) School Libraries shows gulf between best and the rest
There is a growing gap between the best services and those where resources and management support are failing, according to a new CILIP School Libraries Group report.
The national survey of UK school libraries has just been completed, with detailed replies from 1,547 secondary, middle, special and independent schools and exhaustive activity reports from over 1,000 of these, supplemented by information from 655 primary schools.
The final report School Libraries in the UK: a worthwhile past, a difficult present – and a transformed future? concludes that the vision and support of senior management is vital to success. It is crucial that school management recognise the difference that a good school library can make.
Currently, it is not a statutory requirement for schools in England to have a school library. Making school libraries and librarians statutory would be a big help in securing the vital role that libraries can play in enhancing teaching and learning.
Professor Stephen Heppell said: “The evidence continues to accumulate that libraries - and their librarians - lie absolutely at the heart of 3rd millennium learning organisations: a place for scholarship, a place to escape into adventures, a place of discovery, a place to share and explore, a place for deep thought, a place for surprise, and above all else a place absolutely without limits. The best schools have libraries at their centres not as some sad throwback to an earlier age but as a clear and evocative prototype of what ambitious learning might look like in this century of learning.”
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