Children face a postcode lottery for access to school library services amid the slashing of council budgets, say campaigners.
Cost-cutting measures like getting rid of professional librarians, which some Fife headteachers have done, is central to the decline of school libraries and is undermining the fight for equal opportunities, according to the Literature Alliance.
Teachers, authors, librarians and unions have thrown their weight behind a petition from Save Scotland’s School Libraries, which is before MSPs today.
Ann Matheson, chairman of the Literature Alliance, told Holyrood’s public petitions committee that action must be taken to “stem this decline” of Scotland’s school library network.
“The result is that Scotland is creating a situation where the school library service young people receive depends on where they live, something over which they have no choice or control,” she said.
“This cannot be the way to plan for the next generation of Scots to have equal opportunities.”
The country’s largest teachers’ union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), said different approaches to school library cutbacks have resulted in children having “unequal access to the significant benefits that school libraries bring”.
“Any erosion of school library provision serves to widen the achievement and attainment gap at the very time when, in the EIS view, there requires to be a national collective effort to close it,” the EIS statement read.
Hamish McHaggis author Linda Strachan said those responsible for protecting school libraries are damaging them whether “overtly, by neglect or by stealth”.
Ms Strachan, chairwoman of the Society of Authors in Scotland, said: “By not ring-fencing the budget for school libraries and trained librarians, or by forcing school librarians to share their time between schools or to be completely replaced by volunteers without the expertise or time to do the job properly, we will be letting down the next generation.”
A spokeswoman for Fife Council, which announced the closure of 16 community libraries last month, said a “small number” of schools in Fife had replaced librarians with assistant librarians, adding it was a “devolved decision” for headteachers.