Achi news desk-
However, the SLO was closed at the beginning of the current school year due to budget cuts, and it was then decided to sell the materials to schools.
Organizations including the City of Glasgow Parents Group, the Scottish Book Trust and the Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Workers hit out at the closure, which the council described at the time as “a change to the way services are delivered”.
In response to our initial reports, Glasgow Life wrote to parents claiming that the service “hasn’t been scrapped”, but when asked by the Herald, it confirmed that “the distribution and collection of free materials provided through the School Libraries Outreach service has finally come to an end. the previous school year.”
In November, we revealed that individual schools would have to come up with hundreds of pounds to buy the resources from the SLO.
Documents released to the Herald under Freedom of Information laws now show schools have collectively spent £18916.85 to protect materials which, until last year, had been available for free.
However, access has been uneven, and the new material also reveals that only around a third of schools have been able to buy resources from the SLO, a service used by more than two thirds of schools in its year last of action.
Spending levels by individual schools vary from a low of £31.50 to a high of £1016.35, with some submitting more than one order.
The average expenditure across the schools that bought materials was £332.
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The documents released by Glasgow Life also suggest that more than a dozen schools have rejected requests for bilingual books. One of the files says: “All the bilingual books were selected by a member of the EAL team for the schools they work in.”
In response to the latest revelations, Leanne McGuire of Glasgow City Parents’ Group said the original closure decision “seems extremely short-sighted”.
“When the news about the School Library Outreach Service broke, our reaction was one of complete disbelief. It defied logic to dismantle such an invaluable resource sharing service which benefited many schools, especially when it was widely used.
“Transforming to a model where schools would have to buy resources jeopardized equal access, favoring schools with faster implementation and deeper pockets. In a country where literacy rates are declining, we would expect education authorities to prioritize such a vital service.
“In addition, the expertise provided by librarians has been key in assisting schools to set up inclusive education libraries and displays – a resource that is not readily available in many school settings.
“Although some see this as irrelevant, every erosion of educational resources has significant long-term repercussions. If we passively accept such decisions with defiance, these incremental losses will lead to severe cuts, such as what we are seeing with the current budget reductions affecting teacher numbers.”
A spokesperson for Glasgow Life said: “While these library outreach resources were free for schools to access in the past, there was a cost to purchase and manage resources and provide the service. As noted in responses to previous inquiries, schools have been able to secure ownership of Glasgow Life resource materials at a fraction of their original cost.
“Changes to the way services are delivered take time to become fully operational, and this resource realignment project is still ongoing. There remains an open call for schools to order resources and these continue to be processed as they are received. Glasgow Life will continue to engage with Education Services to support the best use of available resources.
“Education Services organizations and EAL teams, who are in the best position to identify the needs of individual schools, are directly involved in the resource ordering process so that they can access resources to meet their requirements.”
Glasgow City Council confirmed that no additional funding has been provided to schools to purchase the SLO materials.
A spokesman also restated the council’s position from November last year:
“We understand that any change to a service takes time to adapt to and we have developed a process for schools to access the resources in a fair and just way.
“Schools that decide to buy the library outreach boxes will take ownership of the materials to support learning and teaching in their school community.
“Local arrangements could be put in place to be shared with other schools and that will be a decision for the head teachers.
“A catalog of the locations of the resource boxes is published centrally and arrangements to transport them between schools will be made at school level.”
