Prue Car is Deputy Premier and Minister for Education and Early Learning. Do you live or work in her electorate?

If yes, please consider writing to her with your request for the role of teacher librarians to be mandated in our schools. Sample letters have been provided for you.  Please  share with friends and family - you do not need to be a TL to have concerns about falling literacy rates and the erosion of this specialist position in our schools.

The Minister's contact details are: 

0298331122

londonderry@parliament.nsw.gov.au

Dear Minister Car, 

When I was a kid the library was my safe space. Literally. The library is a haven, a place of ideas, imagination and untold possibilities.

The librarian and the teacher library should be the heart of the school… Everything they do supports the curriculum, critical thinking, levels of empathy, happiness and well-being.

But the role of teacher librarian is constantly being devalued, eroded, deployed elsewhere and discontinued. In fact, Australia has just recorded its lowest PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results ever, continuing a 20 year decline. 

This is having a devastating effect on literacy levels, reading culture and well-being of students. 

In a world of increasing misinformation, disinformation, the proliferation of AI, kids need the smarts and guidance of the librarian… They need the joy the library can provide but also the information, the research, and the facts.

Almost 23000 people have signed our petition to mandate teacher librarians in schools and as members of your electorate we would like to know how you are going to support this important issue to safeguard the educational future of our children. 

You can find the petition at - Change.org/saveourlibrarians 

Thank you for your consideration. 

Or here is another more formal letter: 

Dear Minister Car, 

I am a member of your electorate and am deeply worried about the diminishing literacy standards of children in Australia and the concurrent devaluation and demise of the role of teacher librarian from NSW schools. 

We recognise that school staffing allocations are managed at the state level and NSW Government holds the ultimate operational responsibility for education delivery within our state—including how public money is distributed and monitored. Therefore, we urge you to address two critical blind spots that are actively undermining our state's literacy goals:

1. Funding Accountability for Independent and Catholic Sectors: While non-government systems operate independently, they rely heavily on billions of dollars in state and federal public funding. Decisions like the devastating proposal by Catholic Schools Maitland-Newcastle to cut qualified teacher-librarian positions across 58 schools in the Hunter region fly directly in the face of your administration’s literacy goals. The NSW Government has a moral and fiscal responsibility to ensure public funding distributed to independent and Catholic systems is tied to baseline student resource protections, including access to a qualified teacher-librarian.

2. Eliminating the Public School "Redeployment Loophole": While we recognise that NSW public schools receive a ‘teacher-librarian staffing entitlement’ the reality is these qualified teacher-librarians are regularly redeployed leaving libraries unstaffed. NSW public school teacher-librarians must be legally ring-fenced so they can perform their designated specialist duties rather than being hollowed out as emergency classroom relief.

We ask the NSW Government to:

• Embed teacher-librarian resource protections into independent school funding agreements, ensuring non-government systems cannot receive public funding while dismantling critical literacy infrastructure.

• Enforce strict compliance checks in NSW public schools to guarantee mandated teacher-librarians are actively working in their designated roles, with transparent penalties for schools that divert library allocations to cover classroom shortages.

• Establish transparent state-wide data collection on school library staffing levels and actual student access hours across all educational sectors.

As you are aware, recently Australian school students received their worst result ever in Programme for International Student Assessment. Reading levels are two years behind where they were two years ago. Last year the 2025 NAP-ICT Literacy assessment, testing students' ability to access, manage, evaluate, synthesise, apply and communicate information and use digital tools appropriately, showed that only 37% of Australian Year 10 students met or exceeded the proficient standard.

The situation is dire and qualified teacher-librarians play an essential part in reversing this alarming trend. Qualified teacher-librarians build strong reading cultures, foster critical thinking and help children develop a lasting engagement with books and literature. Libraries and librarians are particularly important for struggling readers and children who may have little or no access to books outside school. They are also key in teaching information literacy, digital literacy and research skills, capabilities that increasingly determine how well learners participate in civic life and particularly important as children navigate the challenges of AI.

Almost 23000 people have signed a petition to mandate teacher librarians in schools and as members of your electorate we implore you to safeguard the educational future of our children by mandating teacher librarians in all NSW schools. 

Kind regards

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