House of Assembly Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2) 53 2 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Language Programs Language Programs Mr PISONI House of Assembly Unley Language Programs Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:09): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister advise if the language maintenance and development program will continue to fund Greek and Italian language classes in state government schools? The Hon. S.E. CLOSE House of Assembly Port Adelaide Minister for Education and Child Development Minister for the Public Sector Language Programs The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (15:10): I thank the member for his interest in all things multicultural as well as in education. The first languages program to which the member refers is one of the ways in which we teach language. We teach languages as whole language programs which are part of the Australian curriculum, and Greek, Italian, French, German and Chinese sit in that category. We then have an ethnic schools program where, usually on a Saturday morning, communities get together and teach both language and culture, which is highly important to maintaining a very strong sense of cultural heritage. Again, languages such as Greek are taught there and many others as well. There is also the Adelaide School of Languages, which teaches languages after hours but usually on school premises, and that is also a way for students to be able to— Mr PISONI House of Assembly Mr PISONI: Point of order, sir. I ask you to bring the minister back into the context of the question, which was specifically about the language maintenance and development program in schools, not the School of Languages or the ethnic schools program. The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: I think the member for Unley is being rather rugged there. Minister. The Hon. S.E. CLOSE House of Assembly The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Thank you, sir. I was endeavouring to give the house the full context of the ways in which these language programs interact. The final element is that we have had for some time a first languages program, which is essentially aimed at maintaining the language that is spoken at home. When people are newly arriving in their home, they are speaking a language such as Farsi, then they are going into school and they are rapidly learning English in order to be able to function completely in an education setting in English. In order to maintain the quality of their first language so that they are not at risk of reducing their knowledge of that language to only the limited interactions at home but are maintaining the vocabulary and the grammar in order to be good first speakers of that language, we have offered this program. We have undergone a review that was initiated, I think, two years ago and completed earlier this year, which looked at whether we were in fact doing what that program was intended to do. What it was intended to do was to provide first language where first language is being discussed at home, and we have realised that there were a number of communities who were missing out. So, we have rejigged it for the number of newly arriving communities who haven't been able to avail of that support—Punjabi, for example, is now able to be taught through first languages—and that will start to roll out for next year. There is an issue for some schools, for example with Greek, where, because that is not the environment in which Greek is spoken in our country, it is no longer a newly arriving first language community, we are transitioning that so that, while we will continue to offer Greek to school students, we will largely do that through either whole language programs or through the School of Languages. The Speaker House of Assembly The SPEAKER: A supplementary, member for Unley.