Bilingual education policy in Northern Territory of Australia, the implications on its development for educational leaders and its impact on the NT curricula

Tun Min

Introduction

One of the aims of the Australian national language policy is to support Indigenous language programs or to support the formal instruction of Indigenous languages in schools in Australia (Our Languages, 2016a, para.3). However, there seems to be occasional inconsistencies with this aim if the past practices of the Australian government are scrutinized. Bilingual education programs have been among the most significant Indigenous language programs in Australia. In this essay, the focus will be on bilingual education programs undertaken by the Indigenous people in Northern Territory. The essay will start with the definition of the term “bilingual education”, followed by an overview of the origin and development of bilingual education policy in Australia and Northern Territory. Next, it will discuss how education leaders in Northern Territory implicated the bilingual education policy and occasional pressures on it. Then, the consequences of this policy initiative on the current contexts of Northern Territory with an emphasis on its impact on the NT curriculum and alternative future directions for positive conditions for bilingual education will be analysed before concluding the essay.

The definition of bilingual education and a description of BE programs

Since the focus of this essay will be mainly associated with the term “bilingual education” (BE), it is deemed appropriate to define BE, discuss the main features of BE and present relevant BE programs in Northern Territory in this section.

According to Victoria State Government Education and Training (2016), BE allows students to learn the curriculum “in and through two languages, in a balanced way” (para.1). BE has a number of advantages for students that include an increase in: oral and written exposure to language, knowledge and skills in linguistic and subject matters, cognitive abilities including divergent thinking, and “intercultural knowledge, appreciation of and respect for other cultures” (para.2). Further, it also contributes to the revitalization of Indigenous languages and cultures, and provides all the advantages of mastery in a second language (Griffiths, 2011). A study on four programs in North America and Hawaii incorporating Indigenous language and culture found several positive outcomes from the inclusion of Indigenous language and culture in educational programs that include an increase in the students’ first language skills, confidence, pride and self-esteem, as well as in skills associated with mathematics and English (Lipka, 2002, cited in Griffiths, 2011, p. 71). Moreover, it is also generally agreed that BE can help the Indigenous language speakers and their new generation gain a sense of identity (Purdie, 2009).  Hence, it is evident that BE has many benefits for Indigenous students and the community.

There are different bilingual programs depending on various purposes. According to Baker (2011), there are three general forms of bilingual education: monolingual education forms for bilinguals with the intention of producing monolinguals; weak bilingual education forms for the purposes of producing relative monolinguals or limited bilinguals; and strong bilingual education forms with the aims of producing pure bilinguals or both bilingual and bi-literate individuals. The monolingual education programs include those in the forms of mainstreaming or submersion, and segregationist, while the weak BE models are transitional (i.e., from minority to majority language), mainstream (with use of majority language as instructional medium), and separatist (with the students’ option for learning in minority language). The strong BE models include immersion (with initial second language focus), maintenance or heritage language (with a focus on first language), two way or dual language model (with both languages in use), and mainstream BE model (with equal focus on both languages or with additional languages). In the Northern Territory of Australia, the Department of Education has run different BE forms since 1983 (Our Languages, 2016b, para.5). Based on the aims, there have been mainly two kinds of BE programs: “Indigenous Language Maintenance” and “Language Revitalisation” ones (Devlin, 2011, p. 261). In 2008, there were 9 LM bilingual programs and 1 LR program in NT. In 2012, a total of 60 NT government schools taught Indigenous language and culture under different programs for the aims of maintaining languages, renewing them, learning a second language, and being aware of languages (House of Representatives, 2012). Although it was not clear as to the exact number of language maintenance, language renewal and other programs in NT, it seems that there is a recent increase in the number of schools with particular forms of Indigenous language teaching.

An overview of the origin and development of bilingual education policy in Australia

In this section, Australia’s socio-cultural situations along its history with a focus on immigration will be analysed first in order to give a clear context for national language policy incorporating national BE policy.

It is often said that there are approximately 250 Indigenous languages in Australia. However, Ethnologue (2016) shows that there are only 207 living Indigenous languages and 9 living non-Indigenous languages in the country. This means that the other Australian Indigenous languages are already extinct. McKay (2011) commented that there has been a decline in the number of Indigenous languages because of the repressive government policies which have been either explicit or implicit. Lo Bianco and Slaughter (2016, p. 2) analysed that language policy has often been used as “a tool of national reconstruction” with emphasis on broad social aims at various periods of time since the early 1970’s. According to the authors, Australian bilingual education has three distinct audiences, namely, Indigenous people and their languages, immigrant people and their languages and mainstream English speakers. The 19^th century Australia which was composed of Indigenous communities, immigrants, Australia-born people, and those from other continents including Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe permitted different forms of bilingual education from the 1850’s, especially for the non-Indigenous people. By 1900, there were more than 100 bilingual schools all over the colonies. The colonial administration regarded the Indigenous languages as a unique civilization and attempted to civilize the Indigenous people by enforcing Christian faith and European values. Hence, no evidence of formal bilingual education for the Indigenous people was found until the 19^th century and the early 20^th century.

When the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was adopted, English monolingual-ism was promoted continuously (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2016). In 1947, however, a large population growth program was initiated by the Commonwealth government, with the aim of increasing the Australian population by one percent every year by means of immigration. But it prioritized the British immigrants over the other nationalities. In 1972, the Whitlam government not only cancelled the one percent population growth scheme but it also abolished nation-based discrimination for immigration.

The National Policy on Languages (Lo Bianco, 1987) has been regarded as a significant national language policy of Australia. In the document, he discussed about why a national language policy is essential, how national policy on languages should be implemented based on his insightful recommendations, and how the Australian States and Territories contribute to the national language policy. It also recognized Indigenous language and culture, as well as the role of bilingual education. Hence, McKay (2011) described the document as “the high point of language policy in Australia” (p. 297). The Hawke government adopted the national language policy proposed by Lo Bianco (1987) which covered three major fields: “status of languages, teaching and learning of languages, and language services” (McKay, 2011, p. 301). All these policy areas were discussed by the use of three language groupings, viz., “English (and Aboriginal English), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages (including creoles) and other languages (including AUSLAN, the Australian sign language)” (p. 301). After four years of practising this policy, the Australian government gradually shifted its focus on a relatively smaller number of languages which were internationally and economically important, with the aims of promoting the role of English and using the language as a way of national uniformity. Hence, Indigenous languages were neglected and repressed again, affecting bilingual education programs and funding plan till the present time.

The implications of BE policy and occasional pressures on it for educational leaders in Northern Territory

According to House of Representatives (2012), Indigenous language policy of Northern Territory is included in the education policy of the territory. In this section, the educational leaders’ implications of BE policy in Northern Territory will be presented in two separate parts: one focusing on the early historical development of BE policy in NT and the implications of educational leaders on it, and another emphasizing how the modern NT educational leaders and scholars have implicated for the BE policy and occasional political pressures on it since 2008 to the present age.

The early historical development of BE policy in NT (1972-mid-2008) and the implications of educational leaders

The history of bilingual education in Norther Territory schools is highly complex due to the politics. McKay (2011) analysed that the BE history in NT schools is “an example of the complex and ambivalent interplay between policy, politics and practice in relation to the Indigenous languages” (p.312). In December 1972, the newly-elected Whitlam government commenced BE in Northern Territory as a “Federal Labor initiative” (Four Corners, 2009). During that time, there was a widespread favour for BE since it was regarded as a great way to English language mastery. In 1973, there were five schools with a bilingual program specializing in a different language apart from English. In the following year, six more schools in NT launched a bilingual program with one school using a particular language and its dialects apart from English. Although new BE schools were opened in the subsequent years, there were cases where a number of schools stopped operating because of many difficulties. From 1978 to 1986, the bilingual programs faced funding problems with little money for founding new BE programs.

In 1982, by the endorsement of the Northern Territory Government, BE programs were continued with eight aims including that of developing English language and mathematics competency equally comparable to the Australian student counterparts (Four Corners, 2009). Hence, there was a change in focus from language and cultural maintenance to broad use of English. Starting from 1984, BE programs faced several difficulties including reductions in staff and funding. The conditions became for the worse in the late 1990s when the number of well-trained BE teachers in schools and the number of Indigenous language-proficient teachers declined since the number of trainees was reduced by the Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE), which is the major training institute for Indigenous teacher students. In 1998, bilingual education programs were phased out by the Northern Territory Government with three main reasons. The reasons were: (1) the proposition that most Indigenous people were concerned about BE programs; (2) the claim that the performances of the students in the BE programs were not as good as their counterparts in other settings; and (3) the government’s plan for trimming the education budget (Four Corners, 2009). It was a major attempt by the government to stop BE programs in Northern Territory (Lee, Fasoli, Ford, Stephenson & McInerney, 2014). Yet, the government’s proposition that there was an overwhelming public disapproval of BE programs was not true since there were demonstrations and a signature campaign in support of BE by communities and various education stakeholders including teachers and scholars (Four Corners, 2009). Further, the government’s claim about the lower performance of the Indigenous students in BE programs than their peers was also not true. In fact, all NT schools experienced lower learning outcomes than other Australian states (Lee et al., 2014).

In response to the public pressures, the NT government formed a commission for enquiring about the issue whose result was the “Learning lessons” review (Four Corners, 2009). The report found that there was large public support for bilingual education in NT and that there is a public claim for qualified BE programs in favour of their continuance. However, the term “bilingual education” was changed into “two-way” learning. For explaining the concept of “two-way” learning, Disbray (2014, p.134) quoted Devlin’s (2005) as saying that it is “an underlying model of bilingual/bicultural education” where there are shared power and balanced curriculum, where it is acknowledged that knowledge systems competing each other exist, and where the program is concerned with use of languages and observations of cultures in a particular community. Four Corners (2009) also quoted Lugg (2004) saying that although “two-way” learning requires the primary use of local languages as a way of English literacy instruction, a major change is found in the government’s more rigorous tracking of the student attendance and their progress. Consequently, there was a reduction in the number of public schools with BE programs from 16 to 12 in a period of approximately three years commencing from 1998.

In 2003, the report named “The Indigenous languages and culture in NT schools review” questioned the worth of BE programs at the alleged expense of mastery in Standard Australian English and the value of literacy in traditional languages (Four Corners, 2009). It also discussed the need for mastery in English. In 2004, two public schools in NT had to stop their BE programs due to lack of staff and resources and their inability to complete the program review requirements. Hence, there left only ten public schools and one private school running BE programs in NT. Limited funding for the BE program-running schools also posed a serious problem.

In the years 2004-05, a report entitled “The Indigenous languages and culture in NT Schools – 2004-05” was made with recommendations for two BE models called the “staircase” and the dual early literacy model both of which require the teaching of four language skills in both English and the Aboriginal language (Four Corners, 2009). In August 2005, the NT education minister announced that BE was to be used again since the government recognised it as an important methodological approach. In 2006, the NT government guaranteed the next five-year policy supporting BE while ten government schools ran 11 BE programs. In 2008, with the introduction of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), different national assessments and criteria emerged, consequently reducing the number of BE programs in NT to eight and weakening the BE programs in the territory. Generally, BE programs in NT were interpreted to run from 1973 to 2008 with the highest time in 24 Indigenous languages in 25 schools across the territory and in 2008 only in 8 schools (Disbray, 2014). However, a different form of BE was subsequently permitted by the NT government (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2016) which will be further elaborated in the following part along with other cases.

Modern BE policy in NT (2008-present) and the implications of NT educational leaders on occasional policy interventions

The year 2008 was a period of prominent BE policy change in NT with a priority given to the teaching and learning for English mastery. Devlin (2011) claimed that four related incidents took place in 2008. The first was the publication of the summary report of the first NAPLAN test results in September where it was alleged that the performances of the students in NT were not as good as their peers in other parts of Australia. This became the rationale for the three subsequent events. The second incident occurred on 14^th October when the then NT education minister ordered the commencement of a new policy entitled “the First Four Hours” as a direct response to the alleged overall underperformance of the Indigenous students in the NAPLAN and to the media spotlight. By that policy, Indigenous students had to do “an English Only program for the first four hours of each school day” (Lee et al., 2014). With the implementation of that policy, the third incident took place where the eight schools with fairly successful and strongly public-supported BE programs had to stop their programs.

Regarding the prompt policy intervention, Simpson, Caffey and McConvell (2009) noted that the then NT education minister’s announcement had no explicit explanations on the ways of restructuring the Department of Education and Training with greater English exposure, and of improving attendance, literacy and numeracy. The authors also analysed that the policy intervention disregarded the BE research literature and provided no specific rationale or evidence for teaching and learning in Standard Australian English (SAE) by merely alleging it to contribute to the improvement of Indigenous students’ SAE literacy. The final incident happened on 26^th November when highly controversial evidence on the overall underperformance of bilingual students compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts based on 20 recent national tests was tabled in parliament by the then NT education minister. The provided evidence was proved to be incomplete and invalid by Devlin (2009) who commented that the performances of Year 3 students in the BE sample schools were found to be better than the monolingual sample groups on 4 out of 5 tests including Reading, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation with the exception of Writing, contrary to the education minister’s evidence. The AWAYE! interview program with Marion Scrymgour, the then NT Minister for Education, and several other experts including Joseph Lo Bianco on 6^th December 2008 was the one which could present the different perspectives between the Minister and other BE experts (Browning & Sullivan, 2008). From the present author’s perspective, the actions taken by the Minister had inconsistencies; however, she was alleged to have been supported by the Federal government.

In 2009, Indigenous schools with BE programs had to abandon the first language teaching plan since it required to provide the first four hours of every school day for teaching and learning in English (Christie, Bow, Devlin & Simpson, 2014). There was a consensus among several researchers that the First Four Hours policy intervention was a way of dismantling bilingual education in NT (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2016; Simpson et al., 2009; Snyder & Beale, 2012). On 9^th August 2009, however, a media statement and policy document on Indigenous languages was released by the Federal Government (Our Languages, 2016a, para.1). The aim of the new National Indigenous Language Policy is to keep Indigenous languages alive and to allow the Indigenous people to gain connection with their language, culture and country. The policy includes five main aims and accompanying implementation plan for each aim. The stated aims are: to bring national attention to the Indigenous languages; to reinforce the use of critically endangered Indigenous languages; to tackle languages to Close the Gap; to strengthen pride in identity and culture; and to support Indigenous language programs in schools. Lo Bianco and Slaughter (2016) remarked that the policy focuses on the curriculum delivery in English as an instructional medium and continues downgrading Indigenous languages in curriculum delivery.

In 2010, the “First Four Hours” policy was temporarily replaced by another entitled “Literacy for Both Worlds” which was withdrawn on 13^th January 2011, in order to reinstate the “First Four Hours” policy in the following day (Devlin, 2011). On 31^st August, “a draft Literacy Framework for Students learning English as Additional Language” (Devlin, 2011, p. 264) was released by the then NT Minister for Education and Training. In 2012, the Framework for Learning English as an Additional Language announced that English literacy-oriented programs included the Indigenous students’ home language and culture on which the government had reached an agreement with the communities and parents (Christie et al., 2014). In 2014, a new review of NT Indigenous Education did not support “continued efforts to use bi-literacy approaches, or to teach the content of the curriculum through first languages other than English” (Christie et al., 2014, p. 21). Lo Bianco and Slaughter (2016) quoted Nordlinger and Singer (2014) as saying that the downgrading of bilingual education has been coupled with large budget cuts, especially in the Northern Territory Indigenous Languages Support (ILS) Scheme that financially support the community-based efforts for Indigenous language maintenance and transmission. However, there is currently strong public support for instructing Indigenous languages in non-bilingual methods (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2016).

The consequences of the BE policy in the current contexts of Northern Territory and the way forward

There have been many consequences of the BE policy in the current contexts of NT which will be discussed in terms of its historical impact on the NT curricula first. Next the positive conditions for BE policy in the future contexts of Northern Territory will be analysed.

Impact of BE policy on the curricula in Northern Territory

There were several significant impacts of BE policy on the curricula in Northern Territory. During the early 1970s, when bilingual education programs were launched in NT, the Commonwealth Government encouraged the proliferation of vernacular literature, and the efforts for developing Indigenous languages (Christie et al., 2014). It triggered much cooperation between the community and linguistic experts. Subsequently, there appeared vernacular literature and other resources including accompanying audio books. “Both-way education” or bilingual education worked well often with the community-led curriculum development. By the mid-1990s, there was a policy change with an emphasis on standardized testing and academic achievements of students (Christie et al., 2014). In the subsequent years, gradual reduction in funding for BE programs was made and English was used again as the instructional medium and the initial literacy language. When focus on remote Indigenous teacher education was reduced, the NT government also stopped most of the Literature Production Centres and vernacular literacy programs, which once made great contributions to the development of curricula for BE programs.

Out of 28 BE schools which had existed in NT and most of which had stopped operating BE program, 7 BE schools did not produce their own textbooks. The number of textbooks produced by the remaining individual BE schools in NT over their varying periods of existence ranges from 20 (for Umbakumba School which operated from 1977-1982) to 400 (for Maningrida School that ran from 1974-2000s) (Christie et al., 2014). Scrutinizing the textbook production history of the BE schools, it is likely that those without any production were small BE schools which had to rely on the bigger ones due to funding limitation. It is also found that shorter-existing BE schools produced more textbooks for their BE programs.

One prominent impact of BE policy in the current context of NT is that Indigenous Languages and Culture (ILC) is now a component of the NT Curriculum Framework (Our Languages, 2016b, para.10). The presence of this component makes acknowledgements to the significant role of ILC to the 30% proportion of Indigenous students from the whole student population in the territory. There are three major parts in the ILC component: (1) Culture content, which consists of three smaller parts, viz., Country and Land, People and Kinship and Natural Environment, and which are normally developed by consulting with schools or communities throughout NT; (2) Language Maintenance outcomes that are aimed at Indigenous-language speaking students and that are selected for instruction by the community; and (3) Language Revitalisation outcomes that are aimed at Indigenous students who cannot speak the community-selected language fluently.

Nowadays, a program entitled “The Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Records (MILR) program” has been initiated under the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA), supporting government policies and initiatives for the preservation and maintenance of Indigenous languages (Our Languages, 2016a, para.4). It is a good sign of the government’s respect and value for the Indigenous languages and culture.

The positive conditions for BE policy in the future contexts of Northern Territory

If one looks back on the history of BE policy in NT presented above, one may see little integration of research, teaching and policy making in several incidents. In the national context, Lo Bianco and Slaughter’s (2016) major recommendation for achieving the national bilingual goal is that it is imperative that the three entities of research, teaching and language policy making are increasingly integrated. The authors also recommend that the work of professional academic researchers should be harmonized “with the demands and needs of parents and communities, professional educators, and policy makers” (Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2016, p. 11). It is highly likely that the Federal government’s and the NT government’s actual implementation of these recommendations will give rise to the better future for NT Indigenous communities where the positive conditions for BE policy thrive.

Conclusion

The bilingual education in Northern Territory of Australia has passed through the vicissitudes of the complex Australian politics and different policy interventions, causing the number of BE programs to decrease gradually. Although there is large research literature supporting the benefits of BE and there has been widespread public support for BE programs, the neoliberal views of the Australian government have clashed with the perspectives of Indigenous community and BE experts. Hence, it is likely that there will be certain discrepancies between the two opposing sides in the future. Overall, it is essential that the government should implement future BE policy in NT by reflecting Indigenous community’s true wants, incorporating the research evidence for BE, rigorously studying the worth of true bilingual education forms for the maintenance, and revitalisation of Indigenous languages, and finally, sympathetically looking the Indigenous community from their standpoints.

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