[Indonesian_open] FW: Article from The Age re languages education - Experts warn Australia falling behind

[Wittman, Leonie]

Teman-teman yang baik

Forwarded from Sally Shimada.

Leonie

 

 

________________________________

From: Shimada, Sally 
Sent: Tuesday, 12 February 2008 11:15 AM
Subject: Article from The Age re languages education - Experts warn
Australia falling behind

 

Language curriculum reform call 

Farrah Tomazin, Education Editor 

9 February 2008

The Age

(c) 2008 Copyright John Fairfax Holdings Limited.
www.theage.com.au[http://www.theage.com.au]

Education - Experts warn Australia falling behind 

LEARNING a language should be compulsory and students should get
university-entry bonuses if they complete the subject in VCE, educators
are urging. 

As the number of students studying languages continues to decline,
experts warn Australia is at risk of falling behind because its school
curriculum is too "Euro-centric". 

Experts from the Australian Secondary Principals Association, the Asia
Education Foundation and the Australian Council of State School
Organisations have called for reforms to encourage more teachers and
students to learn a language. 

Some of the suggestions include: 

* Reducing HECS debt for university students who take on a teaching
degree in language. 

* Expanding to other states the Victorian practice of giving high school
graduates a bonus on university entry scores for doing a second language
in year 12. 

* Making language a compulsory subject in primary schools to year 10. 

Figures show the rate of year 12 students graduating with a second
language has dropped from 40% in the 1960s to 13% today - with
Australian students spending less time learning a language than those in
all other developed countries. 

But the Victorian Government appears reluctant to change its status on
the school curriculum. "We have struck the right balance," said Matt
Nurse, spokesman for Education Minister Bronwyn Pike. 

Australian Secondary Principals Association president Andrew Blair said
part of the problem was that instead of focusing on a few chosen
languages, schools offered many choices but not enough emphasis on any
of them. 

In Victoria, 22 languages are taught in government primary schools, 19
in secondary colleges and 40 through the Victorian School of Languages. 

But Mr Blair said the curriculum should contain six core languages other
than English - Indonesian, Japanese, French, Mandarin, Spanish and
German - with HECS support offered to university teaching students who
studied one or more of the six. 

"What we haven't been is sufficiently brave to grasp a solution that can
at least guarantee continuity of teacher supply and of programs in
schools across the country," Mr Blair said. 

Terry Aulich, chief executive of key parent group Australian Council of
State School Organisations, agreed, saying the shortage of language
teachers was resulting in schools having to scrap programs. 

In the lead-up to the election, Labor leader Kevin Rudd, who is fluent
in Mandarin, pledged $68 million to promote Asian languages in schools
and tackle teacher shortages. But some have warned that the plan is just
a starting point to rectify decades of government inaction. 

Asia Education Foundation executive director Kathe Kirby called for a
revival of the national Asian languages and studies in Australian
schools strategy, which doubled the number of Asian language learners in
schools in the 1990s, but was scrapped in 2002. 

 

 

(c) 2008 Factiva, Inc. All rights reserved. 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/pipermail/indonesian_open/attachments/20080212/a89780a2/attachment-0001.html