The national curriculum draft, prepared by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), brings down the standard of languages education in Victoria, said Victoria’s Education Minister Martin Dixon.
In a submission to ACARA, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority heavily criticised the languages education guidelines saying that 300 hours of language education from prep to year six, proposed by ACARA are not enough. The Victorian Government is proposing that languages education should be 700 hours to ensure quality. Dixon told Neos Kosmos that the proposed decrease of hours in language education could potentially destroy the current languages education program in Victoria. He said the government will not conform to ACARA’s guidelines.
“In Victoria, we certainly have the best system, we have the best languages educations program of all the states and territories and we not only want to keep that number but we want to take language education in Victoria to the next level. One of the main ways to do that is to ensure we have adequate hours put aside for languages education in Victorian schools and we think around 700 hours not 300 hours,” Dixon said.
In addition, Dixon repeated his commitment to establish language education programs on all the state schools, saying that the Baillieu government is about to move to the position where it will be putting funding and policy in place for this to happen. The Minister pointed out that while he will be advocating for more hours for languages education in the national curriculum, he said if this is not achieved on a national level, Victoria is prepared to go down that path alone.
“Victoria is in a strong position to make our feelings known,” he said. “I am actually the chairman of the Ministerial Council and that’s a council made up of all the education ministers around the country and so I am strongly putting forward my view on the subject, and no matter what the outcome, we will still be delivering the 700 hours across Victoria.
“There is no funding coming from the Federal Government regarding any aspect of the national curriculum so the state still delivers the subjects and the teachers and the resources,” he said.