Melbourne parents fight to keep bilingual Vietnamese program at Footscray primary school
Since the mid-90s, children passing through a primary school in Melbourne’s western suburbs have been part of something that is now found almost nowhere else in Australia: their classes have been taught in English and Vietnamese.
The bilingual program has won Footscray primary school accolades and, according to supporters, has helped social cohesion, language and culture thrive in a part of Melbourne synonymous with waves of Vietnamese migration to Australia.
But change is coming.
Citing a shortage of Vietnamese teachers and a desire to adopt a Latin-based language that is easier for students, the school has decided that the bilingual program will soon switch to Italian. Vietnamese will instead be taught as a “language other than English” (Lote) subject.
Coming in the middle of the pandemic, the move has blindsided some parents, who say they were never consulted about the decision, a claim the school denies.
“The true reason is they don’t want the Vietnamese program and they don’t respect the Vietnamese language,” says campaigner Tony Bui, who has two sons at the school, nine and six, and a daughter, three.
“They want to change it. And when they change it they need a reason.”
Bilingual schools are becoming more common in Australia but they remain rare. Supporters say Footscray’s Vietnamese program is the only one of its kind in Australia. It started as part of a Victorian government push across 12 schools in 1997. Vietnamese was the obvious choice given a “mother-tongue maintenance” program had existed since 1985. The suburb has evolved, but still about one in 10 residents claims Vietnamese heritage.
The program was popular and garnered national media coverage, but in recent years even supporters say it began to falter. Eight teachers have been lost since 2016, which some blame on dwindling support among the leadership. Class hours in Vietnamese have been reduced in recent years.
“Many Vietnamese had been considered not good enough as teachers,” says Chau Cong, who left the school in 2018 after 15 years running the program. “That was the reason many left. They weren’t valued.”
Repeated threats defeated
When a new principal, Jenny Briggs, arrived at the school this year, she told parents she was taking time to research options for the program. She acknowledged there was a “long and emotionally challenging history”.
The program had already come under threat in 2016, when a backlash prompted an intervention from the education minster, James Merlino. It was saved again in 2018.
This time, a report was commissioned from researchers at the University of Melbourne and it recommended the Vietnamese bilingual program be discontinued.
The school notes in a fact sheet there were 16 qualified Vietnamese language teachers in Victoria in 2018, compared with 337 for Italian, though campaigners say the true figure of potential Vietnamese teachers is higher. It’s also said the school received extra funding in recent years to get the program back on track.
In April, as the pandemic was worsening, it was announced in a school newsletter that there would be “a rich, comprehensive Vietnamese language program to sit alongside a reestablished bilingual program with a new target language to be determined through community consultation”.
Yet it was only in July, when Italian was confirmed as the school’s choice from 2021, that what was happening really started to sink in for parents like Bui.
“It made me very angry because I was not consulted before,” he says. “When I contacted other parents, they were surprised too.
“When I explained to [my children] what will happen to their classes next year, they were very sad.”
The Vietnamese-Australian community organiser Lana Nguyen, 27, is among those who came across Bui’s petition to Merlino, which now has 16,000 signatures. Merlino’s office was approached for comment.
Nguyen, who is helping Bui run the campaign, says the situation has echoes of the popular US podcast Nice White Parents.
“It’s just about how school leadership can often be swayed, I guess, by the loudest voices,” says Nguyen, noting they are “often the ones who are most integrated into the mainstream of society” and fluent in English.
Last month Footscray primary was named among several schools with bilingual programs that Deakin University researchers claimed helped push up house prices in the surrounding area.
A non-Vietnamese parent, who supports the program, agrees the thorny issue of gentrification is a factor.
“There seems to be a core group of parents defending [axing the program],” says the parent, who did not want to be named. “Some of the Vietnamese parents are worried about speaking up, they don’t want to rock the boat. [The school says] ‘If they’ve got concerns, they’ll come to us.’ My concern is the divisions.”
‘A bigger picture about where you are in the world’
Hoang Tran Nguyen, 43, has two children at the school, in grades 3 and 6. He is on the school council, which campaigners say decided to end the program behind closed doors in April.
Nguyen is also among about 30 parents, a dozen future parents and many others who have signed an open letter asking Merlino to intervene.
He is barred from talking about the school council’s work. Speaking generally he says class is not the only issue, but that there are “questions about representation”.
“There’s a real lack of proper mirroring or a true reflection of the school cohort,” he says. “You go to the school at drop-off, the two images don’t quite square up.”
The school council president and Briggs referred questions to the Victorian Department of Education and Training, which insists the decision was made after community consultation.
“Great efforts were made including contacting universities to seek out newly qualified graduate teachers and employing Vietnamese-speaking teachers through both advertising and word of mouth,” a spokeswoman says.
“Unfortunately, the school was not able to recruit Vietnamese bilingual teachers with the skills and language competency required to use the second language in specialist curriculum areas, and effectively share that knowledge with learners having much more limited skills in that language.”
Campaigners say they have connected with Vietnamese bilingual schools in the United States in recent weeks that are willing to help.
“If we think it’s not working, we should try harder to make it work,” says Cong.
Hoang Tran Nguyen is already mourning what will be lost. “It’s true that the demographics of the school has changed, but I don’t know if that equates to [ending] a bilingual program, one that has a 35-year history,” he says.
“[Footscray] is the heart of the Vietnamese community so there are immersion opportunities.
“If even you are not Viet, you will have an education that isn’t just about Naplan results, it gives you a bigger picture about where you are in the world and where you might belong.”