Presented by Manjit Uppal at the HSC and Education Forum March 2012 at State Library of NSW

1. Unleash Your
Potential!
Fairfield City
Library Service
HSC Lecture
Program

2. HSC High Fliers Lecture Program (1)
Why do we run the lectures?
Fairfield City Library Service has offered the HSC Lecture
Program since 1995.
Our Library Manager and Council are fully supportive of the HSC
lecture program and recognise the value in what we are doing.
• The HSC age group is a major user group in the library.
• The lectures are seen as a significant event, adding value to
the community, complementing/supporting the work schools
do as well as meeting council’s vision of life long learning.
The lecture program has helped create positive relationships
between the Library and the 13 high schools in the LGA by
supporting the information needs of Year 12 students.

3. HSC High Fliers Lecture Program (2)
Over the years we have built good relationships with the schools
and they trust us to provide a quality program and thereby
encourage their students to attend. Our lectures are offered for
only $7, similar lectures presented by the same lecturers at
Sydney University costing much more.
Where does the money come from?
• There isn’t a separate budget for HSC so it is paid for out of the
Childrens/Youth budget. We aim to cost recover and most years
have recovered our expenses. The money gets paid back into the
same budget before the end of financial year.
• The attendance fee the students pay covers the cost of lecturers
and insurance

4. HSC High Fliers Lecture Program (3)
The lecture program has changed/expanded over the years in
terms of:
• number of students attending
• venues
• marketing strategies
• range of subjects and workshops offered
• content/format of lectures
Continuous Improvement is achieved by adjusting the process
of planning, implementing and evaluating the HSC program
each year.

5. Planning & Implementation
Term 1: Feb-Mar Term 2: Apr-Jun Term 3: Aug
- Contact schools - HSC Marketing Team - Evaluation/debrief
- Formulate program formed
- Book speakers, - Distribution of
venues, equipment fliers/promotion
- Lectures & workshops
held

6. 2008 Attendance Figures
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
No. booked: No. paid: No. attended: Evaluations
completed
No. booked: 356
No. paid: 288
No. attended: 255
Evaluations completed 227

7. 2009 Attendance Figures
250
200
150
100
50
0
No. booked: No. attended: Evaluations completed
No. booked: 223
No. attended: 177
Evaluations completed 151

8. 2008-2009 HSC Lecture Evaluation
• The evaluations were encouraging.
• Making contact with schools started off well but follow ups were
not particularly successful. Library staff being on leave and off sick
also had an impact.
•In 2009 3 schools did not accommodate visits, flyer drops only
were made to these schools.
• Consider having members of the 2010 HSC team visit schools in
their area* so they may develop a better rapport with students –
when they visit the library and see a familiar face!
• The Deputy Principal from one high school suggested that
maybe we attend staff meetings in 2010 and address the staff
instead of or in addition to assembly visits for students.

9. 2010 Attendance Figures
250
200
150
100
50
0
No. booked: No. attended: Evaluations completed
No. booked: 193
No. attended: 178
Evaluations completed 153

10. 2010 HSC Lecture Evaluation
• Again evaluations were positive.
BUT
• Making contact with the schools continued to be difficult
with 5 schools not organising a visit – staff could only drop off
flyers.
• We needed to decide if the HSC Lectures program was still
worthwhile. Given the time and effort required to plan and
organise and the attendance numbers that were achieved this
year.

11. Possible Explanations
Attendance had been dropping over the last few years, due to
a variety of factors:
• Schools offering/organising lectures with the Universities
• More libraries offering HSC lectures
• Increased social media usage and various websites such as
Board of Studies & Bored of Studies
• Private tuition – both 1 on 1 and coaching colleges
• These competitive factors have greatly affected our
attendances, students are spoilt for choice, in fact there is
information overload with perhaps too much choice.
Despite these factors we still feel there is value in running the
lectures and do not want to see the program end!

12. Time for a reality check...
• Numbers were still dropping – this was disappointing
• The barriers we faced getting into schools for visits:
- Admin staff not passing on messages
- messages going to the wrong staff member
- time constraints – school procedures?
- reluctant school staff – who’s responsible?
• We needed to give serious consideration to:
• should we continue?
• should we change the format?
• did the attendance figures justify the time, effort and cost
involved?

13. Time for some drastic changes (1)
1. The number of staff involved in the HSC Team was reduced to
3.5 from the original 7 people – this meant consolidating tasks
and less meetings!
2. Instead of battling to get in to schools to visit Information
packages were created for the Yr 12 co-ordinators.
• Packs included a cover letter, posters and enough flyers for each
Yr 12 student as well as a smaller pack for the school librarian.
• Packs were left with administration staff at the front desk - this
process was not without issues – when we rang the schools to
check that the packs had been received some teachers had not
seen them. Why?

14. Time for some drastic changes (2)
3. The number of lectures was reduced to 3 - English, Business
studies and Maths (2 unit) – this was down from the usual 5.
No. of students booked: 167
No. of students attended: 158
The attendance figures for 2011 were extremely encouraging
given the drastic changes we made, suggesting that our
students still value this program!

15. HSC Forum 2011 – Let’s lock them in!
After hearing the success stories of HSC lock-ins at last years
HSC Forum, we returned to work wanting to conduct our
own.
Time constraints and logistics – security, money for
presenters – plus already having our regular HSC lectures
planned, meant we had to shelve the idea.
We would still like to trial a lock in during 2012 – during
stuvac September 2012 – and are putting together a proposal
as we speak.

16. What’s new for 2012 (1)
Once again we are trialling some new ideas:
Picture book resources that may be used
as additional/related texts for the
HSC English – Area of Study - Belonging
have been relocated to a special HSC
resources display at our main library.
These items are available on 1 week loan,
can be reserved and transferred to
branches upon request.
DVDs and other material types will be
added as we develop the collection.

17. What’s new for 2012 (2)
The Library’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have now been
launched to the public & the HSC team is planning to use social
media to connect with our HSC students.
Covert monitoring of last year’s HSC students (we searched for and read their tweets about us)
tells us Twitter might just work!
The HSC High Fliers blog will be ‘retired’ as it has been evaluated
as ineffective for the amount of staff time required to maintain.
Additionally, a revamp of our HSC High Fliers resources and links
on the website will be released at the same time as the HSC
Lecture Program for 2012.
‘Fairfield City Library Service’
@FLD_Library

18. Want to find out more?
Manjit Uppal
Outreach Librarian - Children & Youth
Ph: 02 9725 0330
Email: muppal@fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au
www.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/library
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