Call for school library funds to be restored

THE GOVERNMENT must restore the school library service for its new literacy strategy to work, Ireland’s children’s laureate said yesterday.

Funding for classroom libraries “runs completely counter to the Government strategy on literacy” and “disproportionately affects the children who are most excluded”, Dr Siobhán Parkinson said.

She called on the Government to restore the link between public libraries and primary schools. The last government withdrew the €2 million in funding for the schools library service and claimed it was diverted into school capitation grants.

Dr Parkinson is a widely published children’s author who last year became Ireland’s first Laureate na nÓg .

The honorary advocacy role is backed by the Arts Council, the Government and Children’s Books Ireland with the purpose of highlighting the importance of children’s literature.

Children could only be taught the reading needed to function in society by teachers, she said. They could only get beyond the functional literacy to a real fluency in literacy by “constant reading” and would only read constantly if offered books which “ignite their interest and fire their imaginations”, she said.

“That is why children need access to a wide range of thrilling, exciting and engaging books and that is what all schools need.”

For the Government to be serious about the literacy strategy, it would need a “proper policy on stocking of school libraries”. A strategy for literacy which did not include such a policy “simply cannot work because it can’t make children literate. What makes children literate is books,” she said.

Last month Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn launched the Government’s literacy and numeracy strategy aimed at raising standards.

Dr Parkinson highlighted the unequal impact on disadvantaged children and said public libraries could not fill the gap of school libraries.

“Not every child has access to a good public library and not every family crosses the threshold. For the most excluded children, it’s only at school they have access to books and now these libraries are being run down, so their options are being narrowly eroded.”

As a result of this strategy, disadvantaged children would also have “inequality of imagination”, Dr Parkinson added.

She spoke of the importance of imagination for children’s development. “The ability to imagine drives almost everything of value human beings do, it drives invention, creativity, problem-solving, empathy, the making of art, falling in love, projecting and forecasting planning and modelling, providing for the future and this is why we teach our children how to read.”