The Australian School Libraries Research Project

Australian School Libraries Research Project Report 1: A snapshop of Australian School Libraries

Demographic information

Demographic information
The TL survey received 702 responses. Of these, 99 responses were incomplete leaving a total survey population of 603. The number of participants is sufficiently large to provide a reliable snapshot of TLs across Australia. The number of participants per state is provided in Table 1 and Figure 1 below.

Table 1: Australian TLs: % total participants by state

State	%Total	Total
ACT	4.643	28
NSW	18.573	112
NT	0.497	3
QLD	18.242	110
SA	17.412	105
TAS	8.126	49
VIC	20.729	125
WA	11.774	71

Figure 1: Australian school libraries: Survey 1, participants by state, all schools

Variables
It should be noted that the extremely small number of participants from the Northern Territory (3) make this subset unreliable. The lack of professional staff response to this survey may be due to:

• There are few professional library staff in school libraries in the NT;
• a lack of availability of Internet infrastructure, thus preventing respondents from completing the survey;
• a lack of knowledge about how to participate online hindered participation; or
• a lack of response from professional staff due to other reasons.

Participant numbers for the other states are large enough to allow some conclusions to be made about school library personnel in the each state, while the total number of participants provides sufficient evidence to draw some conclusions about the overall status of TLs in schools across Australia.

A further breakdown of the demographic data indicates the number of participants according to school type and school level. The largest number of participants came from the state government school sector (50.58%), with the various independent schools providing information about the independent schools sector. These participation rates probably reflect the percentage of TLs in government versus independent schools across the nation, as anecdotal evidence suggests the independent schools sector appears to have a greater commitment to professional staff in school libraries. The independent school subsets include Anglican, Catholic, Christian and Other (as identified by the respondents). Figure 2 indicates the participation breakdown for school level, with primary school (33.499%) respondents fewer in number than secondary (38.805%) and multi-campus sites (27.694%).

Figure 2: Australian TLs: Participants by school type, all schools

Figure 3: Australian TLs: Participants by school level, all schools

 

Figure 4: Australian TLs: Participants by school type and by state, all schools

As indicated in Figure 4, Anglican schools respondents featured prominently in the ACT, but not in the other states. Catholic respondents featured strongly in the ACT, NSW, QLD and particularly in VIC, while Christian schools do not feature at all in ACT, and in small numbers in the other states. Government schools did not feature as strongly in VIC. There may be a number of reasons for these disparities:

• TLs are not a component of the professional staffing in these schools;
• a lack of infrastructure hindered participation;
• a lack of knowledge about how to participate online hindered participation;
• the percentage total of respondents for each state are an accurate reflection of the number of school types for each state; or
• other reasons such as a lack of time.

Figure 5: Australian TLs: Participants by gender, all schools

Figure 5 indicates that teacher librarianship is a heavily feminised profession with nearly 90% of female respondents.