ACT schools are using the increasing popularity of the internet as an excuse to wind back funding and staffing for school libraries, a parliamentary inquiry heard yesterday.
The Australian Education Union has also warned that schools around the country could find themselves with new school library buildings under the Federal Government's $16billion school halls program, but no qualified teacher librarians to staff them.
Australian School Library Association ACT branch spokeswoman Sue Martin told a House of Representatives inquiry the number of qualified teacher librarians was in decline as a result of funding cuts and a lack of training opportunities, and that within five years few ACT students would have access to a qualified teacher librarian.
''Our first concern is a decreasing number of teacher librarians in primary schools and a growing tendency to replace those teachers with untrained staff,'' Ms Martin said.
''We see that schools are using students' high usage of the internet to justify cutting of their library resources and their library staff.''
For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.
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