BILINGUAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

BILINGUAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

By: Ni’matuz Zahroh

Australian Bilingual Education

            Bilingual Education refers here to education in which more than one language is used as medium to teach non-language subjects. It will be discussed as three main types - “enrichment” bilingual education, whose purpose is to add on a second language; “educative” bilingual education, which uses students’ home language as medium to help them cope with their education; and “maintenance” bilingual education, which has as its purpose the maintenance of a language that students bring to school, usually a minority language.

The History of Bilingual Education in Australia

Australia in the Twenty-first Century is a nation with immigrants from many cultures. It is estimated that one in four Australians is foreign born, and one in twenty is from Asia. Linguistically, Australia is also diverse, with about 25% of the population coming from a language background other than English. Italian, Greek, Cantonese and Mandarin are the most common languages other than English spoken in the home (Miller, 2003). In addition, it is estimated that 200-250 Aboriginal languages are still spoken in Australia (Lo Bianco & Rhydwen, 2001).

In the 1970s, multiculturalism policies finally began to address the needs of linguistically diverse students in the schools. English as a Second Language (ESL) programs were offered to students, and some schools began programs in bilingual education. However, mirroring developments in the USA, Australia began to roll back support for bilingual education by the 1980s, and funding for ESL programs was cut. A discourse of mainstreaming began to guide federal policies (Miller, 2003). Though mainstreaming was championed as a way to limit the marginalization experienced by language learners, it also resulted in the loss of needed language support (Ozolins, 1993).

The implementation

In Australia, some schools teach bilingual programs which cater to children speaking languages other than English. Baldauf explains that these programs are now beginning to benefit from more government support. Bilingual education for Indigenous students, however, has only received intermittent official backing. In the Northern Territory, for example, bilingual programs for Indigenous students were begun with Federal Government support in the early 1970s but by December 1998 the Northern Territory Government had announced its decision to shift $3 million away from the 21 bilingual programs to a Territory-wide program teaching English as a second language. Within 12 months though the government had softened its position. Most bilingual programs were allowed to continue under the guise of two-way education. Then on 24 August 2005, the Minister for Employment, Education and Training announced that the government would be "revitalizing bi-lingual education" at 15 Community Education Centres: Alekerange, Angurugu, Borroloola, Gapuwiyak, Gunbalunya, Kalkaringi, Lajamanu, Maningrida, Milingimbi, Ramingining, Ngkurr, Shepherdson College, Numbulwar, Yirrkala and Yuendumu. This revitalisation is conceived as part of an effort aimed at "providing effective education from pre-school through to senior secondary at each of the Territory’s 15 Community Education Centres". As Harris & Devlin (1986) observe, “Aboriginal bilingual education in Australia represents much more than a range of education programs. It has been a measure of non-Aboriginal commitment to either assimilation or cultural pluralism”. In 2008 it again shifted with the government attempting to force the nine remaining bilingual schools to teach the first four hours of classes in English.

The bilingual programs in Australia are ran very similarly to those in the United States. The program is used from Pre-6 grades. Hones (2005) states that overall around 13 hours a week are spoken in the child's native language from grades Pre-4. Grades 5-6 use around 7.5 hours in a child's native language(p.16). To make this program successful, the teacher checks for comprehension along the way. I believe this method benefits the child in the strongest manner. They are able to become bilingual throughout their education. A teacher is able to monitor the student's comprehension levels and either use more or less of their native language until they are confortable to move to another level. In addition to learning a foreign language, the children are also becoming cultured by this process.

Why Australian Aboriginal Communities Wish to Retain Bilingual Education Programs

The three major reasons expressed by Australian Aboriginal communities over the years for why they want to retain their bilingual education programs can be summarized as follows.

1. It makes good educational sense for initial literacy to be taught to young children in their own first language, a language they actually understand, and for second language acquisition (in this case, English) to take place on the basis of that firm foundation. This also has important implications for the children's self-esteem and even their extended families' sense of self-worth.

2. With bilingual education programs, parents and relatives were actively involved in their children's education. Their very real fear is that English-only education will once again, like the bad old days of the Assimilation Policy, exclude families from close partnership with their children's education.

3. Many of the supporters of Indigenous bilingual education programs in Australia regard the current emphasis on a monolingual curriculum in English in Indigenous primary schools in the Northern Territory schools as a denial of the human rights of significant numbers of Aboriginal children.

The Lack of Appropriately Trained and Qualified TESOL Teachers

During the 25 years in which the Northern Territory's bilingual education programs were in place, there was a major flaw in terms of service delivery. This deficiency affected the English-only schools as much as it did the bilingual schools, and can be attributed to the service provider, the Northern Territory Government.

To this day, the lack of appropriately trained TESOL teachers affects the so-called English-only schools to the same extent that it affects students enrolled in the former bilingual schools. While these so-called English-only schools may have been officially classified as nonbilingual, they were and are in a very real sense bilingual school in that they still comprise classes of children who are multilingual and non-Standard English-speaking. In either case, the language needs of the children in those schools need to be taken into account, and that involves some level of acceptance of bilingualism, or, in some instances, multilingualism. In addition, in order to maximize their ability to effectively teach these children, if they are to be effective, TESOL teachers need to be schooled in the specifics of Indigenous Australian languages.

In 1999, after the announcement of the closure of the bilingual education programs, a government-sponsored review of Aboriginal education in the Northern Territory took place, led by Australian Federal Government Labor politician, Senator Bob Collins. The ensuing report (Northern Territory Department of Education, 1999) has become known as the Collins Review. It makes many recommendations regarding Aboriginal education in the Northern Territory. The Collins Review concedes that there is a very high level of support for bilingual education at the community level, but nevertheless fails to support the programs' continuation.

The Indigenous stakeholders affected by the closure of the bilingual education programs have stated clearly that they wish to retain these programs. Hence, the Collins Review's lack of endorsement of bilingual education shows a failure of political nerve, particularly in the context of the Northern Territory Department of Education's constant flow of rhetoric about family partnerships being fundamental to the success of Indigenous education.

To summarize, the Collins Review acknowledges that many Indigenous people feel passionate about their bilingual education programs and feel ownership of them in a way that they usually do not about English-only education. The review also accepts the body of statistically relevant evidence indicating that the majority of trained Indigenous teachers have come from bilingual schools and that academic results in many bilingual schools have been very good by comparison with the results in English-only schools. Despite this, the review fails to recommend the continuation of the bilingual education programs. Why?

Finally, there remains an unmet need for the Territory's Aboriginal schools to recruit, as a matter of policy, qualified TESOL teachers, to ensure the educational effectiveness of the instruction that Aboriginal-language-speaking children receive in English. At the time of writing, June 2001, 2 1/2 years after the axing of these special bilingual education programs, there has been neither a significant increase in the numbers of TESOL teachers employed by the education authority, nor any increase in the level of specialist language training provided to the Territory's predominantly white, monolingual teachers of Aboriginal-language-speaking children.

Instead, there is a prevailing mood of despondency and frustration among those committed to bilingual education for Aboriginal students. Those involved feel that they have no choice but to seek international support on this matter.

Reference

Northern Territory Department of Education. (1999). Learning lessons, An independent review of Indigenous education in the Northern Territory. Darwin, Australia: Government Printing Office of the Northern Territory.