By Matthew Sims
Western Melbourne advocacy group ViệtSpeak has celebrated receiving part of a Australian Research Council [ARC] Linkage Project grant towards launching a three-year Vietnamese-English bilingual program in Braybrook.
As part of ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language’s Little Multilingual Minds project, Goodstart Early Learning Braybrook would commence a Vietnamese-English bilingual program, starting with a pilot program for five weeks this year.
The pilot program would follow on from Maribyrnong losing the country’s only Vietnamese-English bilingual program when Footscray Primary School (FPS) cut its program in 2020 in favour of an Italian language program.
Western Sydney University Professor Paola Escudero and University of Melbourne’s Dr Chloé Diskin-Holdaway and Professor John Hajek would lead the research, which would also involve a similar Spanish-English program at Amigoss Spanish Bilingual Childcare in Sydney.
Maribyrnong council supported the program within this year’s budget, while the Victorian Multicultural Commission also contributed a community grant towards the project.
ViệtSpeak director Hoang Tran Nguyen said the grant was the result of about two years of advocating with council, working with the Braybrook Goodstart Early Learning team and hands-on work by the dedicated volunteers from ViệtSpeak.
“We were really thrilled,” he said.
“Vietnamese is one of the lowest supported languages in government schools, but it’s the most spoken in the Maribyrnong region outside of English.
“There’s a real gap in terms of support to languages that aren’t seen as economic languages.”
Mr Nguyen said ViệtSpeak hoped this program would provide support for the development of bilingual Vietnamese-English programs in primary schools within Maribyrnong and beyond.
“It’s a shame that the community has to do the heavy lifting,” she said.
“The government should actually be doing this work.”
Goodstart Early Learning Braybrook centre director Lauren Joyce said the children and parents were “very excited” to start delivering the pilot program.
“We’ve also had a lot of interest from non-Vietnamese families,” she said.
Maribyrnong councillor Jorge Jorquera said the program was a “fantastic and important win” for the Maribyrnong community.
“Melbourne’s west will now host Australia’s only Vietnamese bilingual program in an educational setting; providing an example of the importance of supporting heritage languages, for both its educational and cultural value,” he said.
