Benjamin Millar
A new Vietnamese-English bilingual program would be introduced in a Braybrook early learning centre under an ambitious plan being pushed by local advocacy group ViệtSpeak.
ViệtSpeak is seeking a $25,000 contribution from Maribyrnong Council to help attract matched funding to establish a three-year bilingual program at Goodstart Childcare Centre in Braybrook, a suburb where 30 percent of the population speak Vietnamese at home.
An open letter to the council asking for $25,000 towards the proposal notes that the contribution would attract Australian Research Council (ARC) funding for the project.
The campaign comes after Maribyrnong lost the country’s only Vietnamese-English bilingual program when Footscray Primary School (FPS) cut its program last year in favour of an Italian language program.
ViệtSpeak member Brendan Duong said the decision went against the wishes of a majority of surveyed parents and despite an online petition against ending the program that attracted 18,000 signatories.
“I was born, raised and went to school locally in Maribyrnong and regret not having better opportunities to learn my parent’s language and culture,” he said.
“Going to school in an English-only curriculum meant that my mother-language was shunned and shamed”.
Tanya Tran, a second-generation Vietnamese-Australian West Footscray resident, said families like hers need education programs to support their children sustaining linguistic-cultural knowledge and identity.
ViệtSpeak has engaged with Little Multilingual Minds (LMM), a group of language education specialists in the Centre of Excellence for Dynamics of Language, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC).
They are seeking to establish a new Vietnamese-English bilingual program at Goodstart Childcare Centre in Braybrook.
The three-year program would include professional development for other staff in the centre on how to support multilingual learners.
Maribyrnong councilor Jorge Jorquera will raise a notice of motion at tonight’s council meeting calling on the council to “lend concrete support” to ViệtSpeak in developing a Vietnamese-English bilingual language program at the centre.
