Greek Australian MPs have backed a potentially radical transformation to the delivery of Greek language education, by telling the Greek Parliament that its funding of teachers in Australia will no longer be required, once a new system has been put in place for Australia to self-fund Greek teachers.
The meeting between the MPs and the Greek Parliamentary Committee responsible for Greek language education, took place at the 8th General Assembly of the World Hellenic Inter-Parliamentary Association (WHIA) in Athens last month. The assembly was attended by twenty-nine diaspora MPs, of around two hundred who are eligible worldwide. Seven Australian parliamentarians attended the conference.
WHIA President, Victorian MP John Pandazopoulos told Neos Kosmos this week: ” It’s about not being the drain we’ve been on the Greek state. We agreed with the Canadians that we should self-fund these things. Greece can no longer afford to send teachers to rich countries. We shouldn’t be having private Greek schools in Australia, where parents pay fees, having teachers funded by the Greek tax payer.”
The association’s president added that Australia should be training its own Greek teachers to work in government and private schools. “One of the things that came out of our discussions was, that if Greece is going to invest in teachers, let’s put the teachers where you’re not going to get support – the US for example, which doesn’t practice multiculturalism.”
Pandazopoulos cites the Canadian experience as a model for future Greek language teaching. “In Canada there’s a whole lot of self-funding that goes on from the community. The community organisations fundraise and provide scholarships for people to qualify as teachers. We don’t have that system here. As a rich country we need to look at other models to work from. You can create your own locally trained Greek language teachers and still have good language outcomes.”