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.