Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to start by thanking the member for Berowra for bringing this motion to the Federation Chamber. It is indeed a motion that I am very proud to stand up and speak to. I particularly also to thank my colleague for acknowledging that I actually do have a long history with the Adult Migrant English Program. I am a trained TESOL teacher and taught with the Adult Migrant English Program for some years, so I was very keen to come to speak to this particular motion.

It would be remiss of me to stand here and speak to this motion without raising some of the concerns that my colleagues that are still teaching in the Adult Migrant English Program have with regard to the proposed changes to the Adult Migrant English Program and how it is delivered, specifically around the division of the Adult Migrant English Program into two streams: the pre-employment and social English streams. The fundamental flaw with this change, even though we are very supportive—and I, particularly, am very supportive of the changes that are being made to the pre-employment stream—is that it really misinterprets the English language needs of all clients, particularly those with low or no literacy skills.

When I was a teacher at the Adult Migrant English Program, I specialised in teaching clients with low or no literacy skills—clients who came with an ISLPR of zero. ISLPR is the International Standard Language Proficiency Rating, which is used by the Adult Migrant English Program to assess people who are eligible for the program and to put them in the correct English language class for their abilities. I specialised in low or no literacy skills. I had a Master of Education specialising in TESOL as well as several years experience as a TESOL teacher. Those kinds of clients, those with particular needs, require highly skilled teachers. They require somebody who has high skills in teaching English as a second language.

One of the issues that has been raised, particularly in the submission by the Australian Council of TESOL Associations, is that the class sizes for the social skills stream is 25, as opposed to 20, which is what it will be in the pre-employment stream. The other issue is that the social skills stream can be taught by either accredited or non-accredited teachers. In other words, the social stream to be delivered through the AMEP with these changes can be delivered by non-qualified TESOL teachers—people who do not have those qualifications that are required in the TESOL stream specifically to teach people with zero or low literacy skills. As I said, there are specific skills that are required to teach that level. The outcome, therefore, is that it is going to have an adverse impact, particularly on women and on refugees, who tend to come in with much lower literacy skills, and on refugee women in particular, who often are illiterate or have limited literacy in their own language as well.

The ACTA, which, as I mentioned earlier, is the Australian Council of TESOL Associations, made these points in a detailed submission to the AMEP. Dr Michael Michell, the president of the ACTA, said:

Without expert teaching, refugees' and migrants' once-in-a-lifetime English entitlement will be wasted. The best these classes can produce will be stigmatised speakers of 'broken' English on a road to discrimination, unemployment and social isolation.

This downgrading directly contradicts the findings of the Government's most recent review of the AMEP.

One of the other findings with this is that we need to understand that 28 per cent of AMEP clients, which is a vast majority, leave the program with a zero or zero-plus ISLPR. These are the lowest levels of literacy. Only seven per cent leave with an ISLPR of two, which is considered basic proficiency. Even so, an ISLPR of two is way below the necessary requirements that are proposed for the citizenship test, which are an IELTS 6. An IELTS 6 is pretty much academic English; an ISLPR 2 is basic communication skills.

In closing, I would urge the government to reconsider the way that it is approaching the AMEP and recognise the professionalism of the teachers. (Time expired)

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