Rural and Remote Education - NT
Rural and Remote
Education - NT
Extracts from submissions
Indigenous
education
Dr Bob Boughton,
Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health, Alice
Springs, May 1999
"Among the reasons
being given [for the decision to phase out bilingual education] is that
the program has made no appreciable difference in developing English language
literacy. Unfortunately, the evidence on which the Minister drew this
conclusion is of doubtful validity, since it consisted of a crude comparison
of the average scores of all students in bilingual schools on a standardised
literacy test with the scores of those in schools which did not have that
program. Since the analysis did not include any controls for other variables,
and since it was not broken down by school, this data tells us virtually
nothing of importance about the effectiveness or otherwise of the program.
"While this may ultimately
be beside the point, in relation to whether or not children and parents
have a right to choose to be educated in their own language, it is of
relevance to any argument that says bilingual education somehow discriminates
against children by inhibiting their capacity to become literate in the
dominant language of administration and politics. On this question, the
jury is still out, in that no conclusive evidence has been produced to
show a negative correlation between having learnt in a bilingual program
and gaining English language literacy. Anecdotal evidence, e.g. from Batchelor
College's Teacher Education Program, or the Institute for Aboriginal Development's
Vernacular Literacy Program, suggests that graduates of bilingual schools
often become very effective advocates of their community's interests,
particularly in relation to education.
".
"It is also of some
concern that neither the statistical data on which the Minister drew his
conclusions, nor the report of the Review Committee on which he also supposedly
based his decision, have been made public, and until that happens, it
is difficult to engage their proponents in more detailed debate about
their methodologies or findings.
"The Commonwealth
funded an extensive in-depth study of English language literacy acquisition
in remote schools in seven communities a few years ago, published in 1996
in several volumes as the Desert Schools Report. The NT Education Department
was an active participant in this study, which made no recommendations
regarding the bilingual program. While the Report acknowledged the vital
importance of TESOL, the principle focus of its recommendations, which
were made in relation to teenagers, was on strengthening the involvement
of the communities in the education process, something which is likely
to be reduced in the wake of the decision to phase out bilingual education.
"This decision appears
to have been taken largely on the grounds of cost-effectiveness, namely
that for the amount spent, the results are not good enough. While no one
disputes the urgent need to raise English literacy standards above the
current level, some bilingual schools, properly-resourced and with a history
of strong community involvement, appear to be doing just that. Those that
are not may well be affected by some of the other factors outlined in
the Desert Schools Report, including the particular language ecology of
the community, the absence of stable experienced trained staff, particular
social problems in the community affecting school attendance and so on.
Each school and community needs to be examined on its own merits before
any meaningful comparison can be made.
"One might also consider,
on equity grounds, the amounts of money spent on teaching languages other
than English in NT schools, e.g. Indonesian, and whether the Aboriginal
population is being treated equitably in this respect, when a few million
dollars is considered too much to spend on their languages. As the data
I presented to the Collins Review shows, Aboriginal children now form
nearly 50% of the school age population in the southern region.
"While the Minister
dismissed their concerns in his most recent statement to the Legislative
Assembly, the main reasons Aboriginal people have given me for opposing
this decision is the threat it poses to their languages and cultures.
They correctly perceive that educational programs play important functions
in valorising certain kinds of knowledge over other kinds, and that reducing
language instruction to something done informally, or in a non-core part
of the curriculum, sends a clear message both to the children and their
teachers about what is important, as well as to the wider non-Indigenous
community. My own limited understanding from research done by Dr David
Wilkins here in Alice Springs is that specific languages belong to specific
areas of country in complex ways which are integral to the maintenance
and reproduction of culture, so to refuse a community which wishes to
do so the right to use the resources of the education system to assist
this process of cultural transmission seems to me to be a very serious
infringement of their cultural rights, perhaps even a direct attack on
their native title rights. I would urge you to seek some advice on this
from native title legal experts and anthropologists with expertise in
the role of languages in the transmission of such rights.
"Finally, the question
of bilingual education should not distract attention from the primary
problem, which is the under-resourcing of efforts to provide a full and
appropriate compulsory and post-compulsory education service to the vast
majority of Aboriginal children and young people, and the apparent willingness
of both the NT and Commonwealth to tolerate a situation which clearly
threatens peoples' capacity to exercise and enjoy their basic human rights.
The degree of educational inequality is indisputable, and its impact is
felt in the NT every day in high levels of ill-health, unemployment, incarceration
and general social distress."
Last
updated 2 December 2001.