Evie Diamandis and Vasso Zangalis met as parents of young children when they were traveling from inner city Melbourne to Oakleigh on a Monday morning to participate in Greek Story time at Oakleigh Library. In talking about what Greek Language options were available at the day schools near where they live, they uncovered a blank page.

This is part one, of a four-part series of interviews conducted by Ms Diamandis and Ms Zangalis, in which they explore various aspects and forces around a successful bilingual/immersion programs in the Victorian state school system.

Their first in-depth interview is with Vic Papas, head of the Language Development Unit in Victoria’s Department of Education and Training. Ms Papas, provides the low down of types of language programs available. She also walked us through processes, resources, Regional Language Program Officers, funding and more.

Currently, there are:

  • Standard language programs at around 150 minutes a week
  • Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL):some learning in the other subject above 150 minutes a week
  • Bilingual: 30-50 percent of learning in the other language
  • Immersion/Bination

There has been some new terminology about Bilingual programs, immersion programs and the general basic language delivery in the school. How do we start differentiating some of that difference?
Vic Papas: From a Victorian perspective there are four categories of language delivery: The mainstream language program, which you would find in the majority of schools, where language is taught exclusively within the language class, up to the recommended 150 minutes per week of language instruction based on the requirements of the Victorian curriculum.
Then there are CLIL programs. CLIL programs are moving into the realm of immersion, where content is taught in the other language to some of the kids across some of the curriculum.
Then there are schools offering a bilingual education as bilingual schools or through our bi-national schools. Binational schools offer the curriculum from the country of origin in that language, alongside the Victorian curriculum, whereas our bilingual schools offer the target language to 100% of students for between 30-50 percent of the curriculum.
Currently, we have 12 government primary schools that offer 14 bilingual programs between them, including Greek with four schools offering bi-national programs. In any given year, there are approximately 70 government schools offering CLIL. However, the majority of government schools offer a mainstream language program. In addition, the Department funds our Community Language Schools, which offer language learning outside of school hours, such as the Greek schools run by the Greek Orthodox Church and other not-for-profit community organisations.
Over the years there has been a significant, transition of Greek-language learning to the community language school sector away from the Victorian government schools sector.

How do we make sure that schools are reaching the minimum requirement of 150 minutes a week?
On an annual basis the Department identifies a minority of schools which are not meeting the recommended timeframe or who do not offer a language. Then, we put into place, with the assistance of our Regional Language Project Officers who deal directly with schools, a program to assist these schools arrive at a place where they are offering a language and/or increasing their time allocation.
Often for rural and regional and remote schools, this relates to a workforce shortage issue, and not due to a lack of desire from the school. So, we look at more inventive ways to resolve these workforce issues using strategies such as virtual based language learning.
Additionally, we try and place language assistants into those hard to staff schools and find that some of those language assistants go on to become teachers and then connect with that school. Where it’s not a teacher-shortage issue, and perhaps reflects the leadership not seeing language learning as a priority – we offer leadership courses, language maintenance courses and the such to improve understanding of the importance of languages and how best to implement language learning in the school.


The other thing we see in the Greek community is not getting enough graduates coming through and picking up Greek as a language, so the capacity for the schools to be able to find a qualified Greek teacher is a challenge.
It’s a real challenge, particularly for our bilingual schools as in these schools you are not looking at the average language teacher but teachers with extremely high proficiency, someone who can deliver conceptual ideas in Science and history and maths, for example, in another language. We would love more people to see the value of becoming language teachers, but they are just not coming through the teacher-training institutions.
The government has put some attractive packages together to entice people to take on teaching, particularly if they are going to teach in regional areas, and this may also entice language teachers.

So what are we doing to a) educate the parents, and b)if the parents want a bilingual program, do they realise that they could have this as an option?
We can use argument that we live in a globalised world, and the relationships we form socially, professionally, economically are all interdependent and language can only be useful in that circumstance, but what we are additionally promoting as a Department is research that explicitly links the learning of another language with literacy improvement. There is a lot of evidence around the world showing that students learning a language(s) perform better in English literacy due to the overlap in the conceptual thinking required.

How are the school communities getting that message?
Whenever we can, we have focused on getting schools to engage in that thinking, with our Regional Languages Project Officers, having those discussions with schools all the time.

You said that there was additional funding for bilingual programs, so could that be one incentive for a school to pick a bilingual program?
If a school applies for and is accepted into what we call the ‘Designated Bilingual Program’, funded and coordinated by the Department, it will receive additional funding, calculated at a per student capita rate, scaled according to time on the target language, between 30 and the 50 per cent.
The additional funding supports planning time, professional development, time release, languages Education Support Staff, and program leadership. A school only offering a mainstream language program will not be considered for inclusion in the Designated Bilingual Program. It’s too big a jump.
These schools need to transition from mainstream language delivery to a CLIL model of immersion and then to a bilingual model. Notwithstanding ministerial approval, a school needs to display this level of readiness evidenced by a robust rationale that has full local community and staff support, articulate its targets for its bilingual delivery and understanding of bilingual languages pedagogy, as well as program implementation documents and workforce planning strategy, with an assurance that the school after three years will achieve 50% time in the target language up from minimum 30% expectation. It’s a long process with applications by invitation only.

So, if the school has everyone on board, and a genuine commitment, you are happy to support that process?
Genuine commitment is a given, but a school needs to evidence a sophisticated understand of bilingual delivery.

If schools are unsure how to get there, you are happy to support that process.
Absolutely – we are always keen to talk to schools about what sort of support or advice we can offer so they can ramp up their language delivery.

There are a lot of new schools being built, are they being told that bilingual, immersion is an option.
VP: In the main, our Regional Languages Project (RLP) Officers would be having discussions with those schools, outlining the opportunities and benefits of not only teaching languages but offering languages in an immersive context.

The Designated Bilingual Program schools, what are the features that make them stand out?
The key feature is total commitment by the school leadership and local community, with a well-informed understanding of bilingual languages pedagogy. Once the school gets to the point where the leadership team and the community are on the same page, you have a powerful formula for bilingual education delivery. The other significant component is the ability to sourcing high-quality ,native-speaker language teachers.

What is considered best practice?
A combination of things; time on the target language and quality of provision by a qualified language teacher. I would argue that any school offering less than the recommended 150 minutes of language teaching per week may be compromising it’s delivery I think, an immersion approach certainly reflects best practice, where language is being learnt in situ in and through other curriculum areas.