The Scottish Library and Information Council and HMIe worked to together to develop Libraries Supporting Learners. Almost all Scottish Secondary Schools are staffed by a single, professionally- qualified and often Chartered librarian. In primary and Special Schools, access to professional advice varies from authority to authority and is generally offered by a central team.
Librarians have traditionally supported the learning and teaching in schools by providing and managing a range of curriculum resources, as well as access to good quality information. Librarians actively support the development of literacy skills, with home reading assignments, leisure reading and Live Literature Scotland programmes. Librarians have contributed to the information and study skills programme of many schools and are involved in study and homework clubs. Librarians are also involved in supporting the development of core skills by learners and teachers’ professional skills by resourcing their knowledge-base.
School librarians can make a contribution to raising standards in secondary schools, particularly in areas of literacy, information literacy and ICT. HMIe agreed to How Good is Our School was published by HMI in 1996 and used as self-evaluation toolkit for assessing aspects of education and management performance in schools. Taking A Closer Look at the School Library Resource Centre was part of the education community’s response through customisation for aspects of service delivery.
Education policy has changed and developed and new frameworks have evolved to support the development of services. This included the quality improvement agenda, National Priorities and How Good is Our School 2002, with quality indicators rather than performance indicators. Libraries Supporting Learners - SLIC has established this working group to re-align "Taking a closer look at school library services" with the changes made to How good is our school 2002.
Remit: "To review "Taking a Closer Look at the School Library Resource Centre" and realign it to the quality indicators in HGIOS2."
Membership was drawn from different types of services.
Marilyn Milligan, Falkirk Council (Chair), Helen Adair, Moray Council, Caroline Beaton, Perth and Kinross Council, Maggie Gray, Fife Council, Cleo Jones, Edinburgh City Council, Frances Walker, Glasgow City Council and Rhona Arthur, SLIC (Secretary)
The Working Group met on 9 occasions between January 2004 and February 2005, with writing teams working between meetings using email.
From the outset, HMIe were consulted and involved – Ken Muir HMI, Elisabeth Morris HMI and Michael Wood HMI all contributed valued guidance.
The Masterclass (those participating in the Scottish Government's ICT training for teachers and school librarian’s post-NOF) school librarians were consulted about the choice of quality indicators, the layout and content of the grids and they contributed to the case studies.
Once the quality indictors were agreed, the Heads of School Library Services were consulted. They also spent considerable time looking at one of the drafts and contributing to the development of case studies and support materials.
Originally the Working Group had a list of 18 QIs. HMIe soon whittled this down to a more manageable 7.
HMIe also suggested that the Group look at their Guide for Evaluating education and care placement for looked after children and young people. This is divided into 3 sections, each of which addresses a different audience. The Working Group seized the opportunity to address some QIs directly to school managers and some to school librarians.
3 Quality Indicators for school managers
7 Quality Indicators for school library staff
These came from suggestions from HMIe, Heads of School Library Services, the Working Group and Masterclass librarians. They exemplify practice as it relates to the Quality Indicators.
Each grid asks a key question relating to the QI’s themes. The next column aims to show why this is important. The final columns allow the user to assemble their evidence by listing the strengths and areas for improvement.
The user can use a combination of judgement, experience and the case studies to assess their position of Level 1-6. This new grading scale has just been introduced by HMIe.
The user completes their evaluation of their service by completing the overview, which lists the level allocated to each QI.
Looking more closely at QI 2.1 theme Pupils’ progress in learning
Key questions to ask include:
In what ways do pupils make progress in their learning in the school library resource centre?
The grid tries to show why this is important:
The school library resource centre offers a widely differentiated range of learning experiences and resources, meeting the variety of learning styles. Pupils will have access to the school library resource centre, appropriate to their learning needs.
The library staff should then search for evidence by consulting others, observing activity, measuring inputs and outcomes or examining written evidence. These are all listed in the introductory part of the guide.
These are the three QIs aimed at managers.
Primary headteacher rely on a variety of staff to contribute to the running of their library.
The QIs for school managers focus on what the focus of their attention is often on – attainment, resources and quality improvement.
The Working Group started off collecting case studies in partnership with others, as a demonstration of best practice, which helps head teachers see what is meant. The case studies are all anonymous but they are all real. The anonymity is HMIe practice. It is hoped that these will answer questions for managers about how their services should be developed and provide a benchmark for best practice.
Libraries Supporting Learners will appear as part of the HMIe series of Guides to Self-Evaluation.
The document will go to all schools – headteachers in special and primary school schools and in secondary schools, both the head teacher and school librarian will get a copy. Other copies will be circulated to HMIe, Education directorate and other parties. There will also be downloadable copies on the web. TACL will continue to be made available because the illustrations are still useful.
Libraries Supporting Learners demonstrates a number of important messages for school library staff:
The success of Libraries Supporting Learners is in its use by HMIe in the inspection process and the inclusion of the guide in the self evaluation pack for head teachers.
Scotland's Information
Research Collections Online
Scottish Library and Information Resources
Scottish Distributed Digital Library
Scottish Collections Network
Co-operative Information Retrieval Network for Scotland
© Send comments, suggestions and queries about SLAINTE to Gillian Hanlon. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License 27-Jul-2010
