Martina Devlin has an opinion piece in today’s Irish Independent about the cut to the school library budget.
It didn’t cost a lot, at around €2m a year, but it made a difference. It meant books — not textbooks but attractively packaged, recently-published novels and non-fiction books — were introduced into the classroom.
After almost 40 years, the scheme has now been discontinued. There is no School Library Grant for 2009 — the budget is gone. Not reduced but removed. Teachers and librarians expected some decrease, in view of economic circumstances, but to their dismay it has simply vanished.
The impact of the cuts for children, teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers and suppliers is huge. If you feel as strongly about this as we in CBI do, please please tell your elected representatives local, national and European. You might also want to Talk to Joe about it. The more we can raise our voices the better.
There is also a good report about how the scheme operates available from Wexford Libraries here
July 21, 2009 at 2:42 pm |
[...] books there are other key areas of concern specifically within Education and these added to the cuts to the school library budgets already discussed are terrifying, how and ever that is for another post. Back to [...]