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THE UNITING CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA

NORTHERN SYNOD

Statement on Bilingual/Multilingual Education

The Northern Synod Standing Committee has considered changes made in eight Aboriginal schools that until 2008 offered bilingual education. The schools involved include Maningrida, Milingimbi, Galiwinku and Yirrkala, where members of the Northern Regional Council of Congress (NRCC) of the Uniting Church have protested about the changes.

The changes announced late in 2008 mean that during the first four hours of the school day, only English is to be learned and the previous approach of teaching/learning in both English and a local Aboriginal language has been banned. This approach means that Aboriginal teachers and students are not allowed to speak their own local languages unless it is related to learning English.

As a recent petition to the NT Parliament summarised, the reasons why NRCC representatives have asked the Uniting Church Northern Synod Standing Committee to act include:

  • current bilingual programs are effectively closed against the wishes of the communities involved;
  • access to English literature and knowledge of western curriculum areas will be significantly more difficult if understanding is not achieved first in the language that the children speak and understand;
  • the nationally and internationally recognised work done by the NT Bilingual Program will be discontinued;
  • Aboriginal teachers and education workers will have greatly reduced career paths; and
  • the rights of Indigenous people are being undermined.

This issue is also of concern to NRCC members from non-bilingual schools such as Ramingining and Gapuwiyak because the same English for the first four hours policy is applied to Aboriginal teachers and students in those schools. While these schools are not asking to become bilingual schools, NRCC members are asking that Aboriginal staff and students are able to use their own languages in support of better student learning outcomes in English and in Aboriginal languages.

The Northern Synod calls on the Northern Territory Government to make a new decision on the use of Aboriginal languages in NT Department of Education schools, in particular to:

1.rescind the current policy that only English is to be taught for the first four hours of the school day;

2.recognise that children learn better if they understand the language spoken in school and that learning a second language (English) is helped, not hindered, by using their first language for learning across the curriculum;

3.introduce a new policy on the use of Indigenous languages in schools whereby local communities are able to determine whether they wish to have education programs in both a local Indigenous language and English;

4.the new policy to recognise that when Aboriginal staff and students are able to use their own languages this supports better student learning outcomes in English and in Aboriginal languages.

12 November 2009