A forum to discuss languages education with the Greek ccommunity took place last Monday at the building of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne Victoria (GOCMV).
The forum was an initiative of Victorian MPs John Pandazopoulos, and Jenny Mikakos who organised for Parliamentary Secretary for Education, MP Steven Herbert to attend.
The Victorian Government has released a discussion paper on a new language education strategy for schools in Victoria.
Also present at the meeting which was attended by approximately 60 people was Education Department’s official Ian Burridge.
The deadline for submissions ends is the end of March and a committe was set up after the meeting from Greek educators to make submissions.
“A number of issues were identified during the discussion,” Mr Pandazopoulos said.
One of those issues was the fact that the government has put a lot of emphasis into the teaching of Asian languages in the last decade sometimes at the expense of other European and community languages such as Greek.
“A thing that we did hear quite a bit [during the meeting] is that [the teaching of Greek] is often left to the parents,” Mr Pandazopoulos pointed out.
He explained that a few Greek parents want to fight for the teaching of Greek in the school but are not supported by other Greek parents or the broader Greek community in their local area.
“They feel that they’re left on their own and therefore feel powerless if the School Council decides to stop offering Greek in their school,” he said.
GOCMV Board member, Theo Markos highlighted the fact that although no specific proposals were outlined during Monday’s meeting it was a good opportunity for the community at large to air its concerns.
Meanwhile, three Federal MPs of Greek background joined forces last week to call on the government to include Greek as one of the languages in the new national schools curriculum currently being developed by the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA).
Labor MPs Steve Georganas from S.A., Maria Vamvakinou from Victoria and Liberal MP, Sophia Mirabella also from Victoria highlighted the importance of the teaching of the Greek language in their respective speeches in Parliament.