"Progressively withdraw the Bilingual Education program, allowing the schools to share in the savings and better resource English language programs."

A 3 year time frame has been suggested, with some of the major restructuring likely in the first half of next year.

The plan, according to Anne Martin of the University of NSW, not only strikes at the heart of Indigenous education, but is a re-run of Shane Stone's closure of a number of schools (mostly Aboriginal) across the top end in the late eighties.

A web page at Milingimbi School's website explains some of the changes in Bilingual Education. There is a comments page available as well. Let these staff know your views and hopefully they will gain support for Bilingual Education via this site.

Go to MILINGIMBI CEC , or you can email Rosalind Djuwandayngu the Principal at Milingimbi CEC on milingim@topend.com.au

The professional linguistic and educational communities have expressed their dismay with the decision. The Australian Linguistic Society, through its president Professor Peter Austin, has written to ministers of the NT government to ask them to reconsider the decision. Dr David Wilkins, together with 35 other researchers affiliated with the Max Planck Institute in Holland (including two world renowned experts on language acquistion - Professor Dan Slobin and Professor Melissa Bowerman) has also written directly to the Minister concerned (see text of letter). The Faculty Board of the Faculty of Education and Languages at the University of Western Sydney has passed a motion condemning the changes.

Alasdair MacCaluim, the campaigns officer of Comann Ceilteach Oilthigh Dhun Eideann (Edinburgh University's Gaelic society), has sent a message of support, urging the NT government to reverse their decision.

Jeff Siegel has written of the reaction to the announcement in Hawaii, and provided information about the benefits of bilingual education.

Jeff Siegel and Bruce Sommer have provided a list of references that discuss the history and benefits of bilingual education.

Ann Stewart, in one of the many messages of alarm and protest that are currently circulating, says:

This is devastating news to the many Aboriginal schools, communities as well as teachers and staff involved in bilingual education. Consultation undertaken was narrow and brief and geared towards justifying the ends ... This is the most blatant attack upon indigenous education and the rights of Indigenous people to make choices about the nature of education of their children. Additionally, the impact upon language maintenance for the many language groups affected will be immense.

...a number of people immediately pointed out that the announcement gave communities a false and potentially divisive choice, and that communities should never be asked to surrender the right to teach and learn in their own languages, before they could access ESL support. ESL and bi-lingual education are not mutually exclusive, it was said, but could and should work together to produce quality educational outcomes for Aboriginal communities. It was also pointed out that this action directly threatened the rights of indigenous language speakers to educate their children and young people in those languages if they wished, with government support, a right specified in the current draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

• Aboriginal people are being told that their written and spoken languages have no official place in NT schools for their children
• Access to English literacy will be more difficult if literacy is not achieved first in the language that the children speak (national and international research supports this)
• The nationally and internationally recognised work done by the NT Bilingual Programs in collecting and maintaining language resources will be discontinued (this is a part of the heritage of all Australians)
• Aboriginal teachers will have greatly reduced career paths.

8 December 1998, updated 11 March 1999