Here is the text of a letter that I have sent to the councillors who will make the final decision about the future of the Herts Schools Library Service on Monday 19th December.
Dear Cllr.,
On 19th December you will be
making the decision to either save or close the Hertfordshire Schools’ Library
Service. Having looked carefully into
the process to this point, I have several concerns that I would wish you to
consider.
Firstly, that the process
has come this this far without consultation with the stakeholders in this
service: the schools. Before Tuesday 6th
December there was no notification that the service was even running at a
deficit, let alone in danger of closure.
That it had come as far as the Local & Libraries Panel without
consultation is disturbing. Having
spoken to some of those who attended that meeting, I understand that they
believed consultation had taken place, through the Schools Forum. Sadly, this is not the case. The Schools Forum is charged with making
decisions on behalf of the county’s schools, but there is no consultation. Headteachers and School Librarians were unaware of the proposed
closure. Staff have been shocked.
The last consultation with
schools on this issue took place in 2007, when schools were in a very different
position. Reductions to their budgets
have taken place since. The statistics
provided in the report show that there has been a corresponding decline in the
numbers of schools subscribing to the service.
This can hardly be surprising when Heads and department leaders have had
to make the choice between staff or resource reductions. Many librarians put off their subscription
for this year, intending to buy back in when budgets had stabilised. At no point was there any indication that the
service was in danger of closure. In addition, the statistics show that last
year there was in fact an increase in the number of schools subscribing: 14% from
primaries and 19% from secondaries in 2010-11.
This has been put down to effective marketing and offers from the SLS,
which shows very clearly that there is demand for its services. Basing a ‘developing trend’ on one year’s
decline, particularly when that one year coincides with dramatic budget cuts,
is misleading. It is a Traded Service
and therefore commercial, and good commercial sense insists that your
stakeholders be kept abreast of any financial difficulty. This has not happened.
Some believe that schools
have been consulted through the option to subscribe and have ‘voted with their
feet’, but this is inaccurate. Schools
have never been given the option to subscribe or loose the service. The choice they made this year was not to
drive it to closure, but to save money in their immediate futures, believing,
as we all did, that the service was safe.
The two choices are very different.
I was told that no schools have subscribed since the announcement of the
service’s imminent closure. It can hardly be a surprise that schools are unable
to invest in a service that they have been told should close. It will also have
been very difficult for relevant departments to make arrangements for a new
subscription this close to the end of term.
The timing of this process
is of deep concern. The news only found
its way to us, through Twitter, on the 6th December, barely 9 working days
before schools break up for the holidays.
The run up to Christmas is an intensely busy time for everyone and for
schools to have so little notice that a valued service is under threat, with
the final decision to be made after the end of term, is worrying. The process had already gone so far that many
felt that they were already too late to take action, protest, or subscribe in
time to save it.
The initial report (Murphy,
2011) into the future of the funding of the service recommended that the ‘SLS
would require the existing level of funding from the education budget to be at
least maintained.’ The Schools Forum
voted in November to do just this.
Funding from the education budget has been guaranteed until 2013 and yet
the recommendation was carried forward to close the service (Bignell &
Murphy, 2011). This simply does not follow.
The initial report also mentions the potential for running costs to be
reduced following the relocation from the New Barnfield site. This does not appear in the report presented
on 7th December.
The potential impact of the
closure has not been fully explored. CILIP (Chartered Instituted of Library and
Information Professionals) and the SLA (School
Library Association) can provide advice and guidance to schools and librarians,
but they are ill equipped to do so, as the structure has traditionally been
that they advise the SLS and the SLS advise the end user on a local level. Problems such as a detailed question on
copyright, the licensing of DVDs or the legality of access to information need
swift resolution from professionals who are well placed to assist. The SLS is the source of this for Hertfordshire.
The 7th December report is
also contradictory in its assertion that the closing of Schools’ Library
Services is a nationwide trend, while suggesting that schools and libraries
would be able to buy into similar services from nearby counties. Hertfordshire
Schools’ Library Service is ‘one of England’s largest and most
respected’ (CILIP, 2011) and is often referred to as the SLS flagship. Surrounding counties will be taking their
lead from the decision made by Hertfordshire.
Closure of this service could create a domino effect of similar closures
across the country. The closure of these services may be a nationwide trend,
but is it really one that we want to be a part of?
There are no practical
alternatives for the services provided by the SLS. They are a hub for resources, advice and
training. They are a powerful buying
group and have negotiated substantial discounts on otherwise unaffordable
e-resources which will be lost to schools if the service is closed. The Equality Impact Assessment (Bignell &
Murphy, 2011) details the potential for negative impacts, with no action
suggested to equalise this. If the SLS
is closed, over one third of secondary schools and nearly half of primary
schools in the county will loose access to resources, and these are only the
fully subscribing schools. This
represents thousands of children, thousands of learners. An additional 15% of schools buy Pay As You
Use services. An recent poll by the
Literacy Trust revealed that 1 in 3 children does not own a book. Access to these resources has never been more
vital.
Funding from 2013 is
uncertain, as new school funding structures come into place. Changes in the way that the SLS is funded and
structured are necessary and inevitable.
The move to a new site should surely be seen as an excellent opportunity
to make these changes and show the country an efficient, streamlined service
that offers enough to be valued by schools to the extent that Headteachers are
willing to invest more of their directly allocated funds. I believe Tricia Adams, the Director of the
School Library Association, has already offered consultancy in this
matter. To simply close such a wonderful
resource because of an uncertain future runs counter to good sense, business
logic and investment in the most important aspect of all: education.
Hertfordshire County Council
have already shown that they value libraries and learning through an admirable
refusal to close a single public library, despite the need for heavy cuts. A Schools’ Library Service may be
non-statutory, but this does not mean that it should be thrown away. Please consider giving the Hertfordshire
Schools’ Library Service the support it deserves and encourage a new direction
in which it can prove its value and save itself.
With hope,
Miss Nicky Adkins
Librarian
Roundwood Park
School
