Too little Aboriginal bilingual education

English as a fourth language

Many Aboriginal people speak English as their third or even fourth language. They grew up learning Aboriginal languages as their mother tongue.

These students struggle in English-only schools because they have difficulties understanding what the teachers explain. Consequently they fall behind those students whose first language is English.

I visit the communities with my Elders who speak four or five languages.—Maryanne Winton, Gurindji woman [11]

Bilingual education

Former Prime Minister Gough Witlam introduced bilingual education in schools in Australia in December 1972 [1]. Until 2009 only 9 out of 60 remote Aboriginal schools offered bilingual classes [2] which were successful in allowing children to attain good academic results on the basis of their own language and culture [3], but also helping them grow a strong Aboriginal identity.

But in January 2009 the NT government ruled that the first four hours of education in all NT schools should be delivered in English, putting and end to 34 years of bilingual education in the Northern Territory and to the 9 remaining bilingual programs.

One consequence of the scrapped bilingual programmes was that school attendance dropped to an average of just 30% in the NT [4].

The use of Aboriginal language in schools brings Aboriginal parents and grandparents into the school and so brings the community and the school together.—Prof Michael Christie, School of Education, Charles Darwin University [4]

“It is widely regarded that the most effective education for Aboriginal students was the mission days when the teachers learned the local language and used it to teach English,” said Syd Stirling, Northern Territory Education Minister in 2005 [6].

Fewer and fewer Aboriginal languages are taught due to the omnipresence of English, pressure on schools to ‘teach to the test’ and the lack of teaching resources. Some Aboriginal dialects die out when the last speaker passes on. Worldwide a language gets lost every two weeks [5], and Australia’s Indigenous languages are in grave danger of becoming extinct too.

For most Indigenous children, standard Australian English is an additional language, which presents a real challenge in the everyday classroom.—Thelma Gertz, Catholic Education Office, Townsville [7]

Aboriginal languages lost in Australia

Question: How many Aboriginal languages existed in Australia before European invasion?

Tell me!

Linguists say that Australia is the top ‘hot spot’ for vanishing languages [9].

Australia’s Indigenous north with its 153 languages is leading a list of five global areas, along with a region of central South America.

Every two weeks one of the world’s 7,000 recognised distinct languages vanishes, often because its last elderly speaker has died.

In 2006 only 804 Aboriginal people out of a population of 148,200 in New South Wales were speaking and Aboriginal language [10].

You can't have a culture without a language.—Aboriginal elder [10]