Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently I spoke in the debate on the Australian Citizenship Bill 2006 to express my disapproval of the government’s planned changes to citizenship requirements. One of the issues I raised related to the lack of services for migrants to learn English. Today I wish to address some specific concerns in relation to those services.  A critical change to funding of the Adult Migrant English Program was the introduction of tendering in 1998. Competitive tendering has not marked a change for the better in the provision of services. The competition is intense as training providers seek to provide teaching at the most economical price. A result of this competition is that student learning will be disadvantaged, particularly with student-teacher ratios. What we must ask is whether this is the most appropriate manner in which to fund such an important program.

Currently, the AMEP offers a standard 510 hours of tuition for migrants. In 1997, an additional 100 hours of entitlement were created for humanitarian entrants. In 2004, up to an additional 400 hours were created, also for humanitarian entrants. The rationale for this was to focus on those under 25 years of age with low levels of literacy and schooling. It is also worth noting that a number of people have already paid for some of that tuition through their visa application—in some cases up to $4,000. Of course, there has been an increase in skilled migrants who are required to have high ‘vocational’ level English prior to coming to Australia, though there are problems with English pronunciation in some of these cases.

However, it is the humanitarian migrants whom I wish to consider today. Over the past few years we have seen an increase in humanitarian refugees, particularly from Africa. Many of these people are not literate or are barely literate in their own language. The disciplines of learning we take for granted in a Western culture are nonexistent in theirs. Children can be ‘child soldiers’ and certainly have spent at least a large part of their short lives in camps—not a conducive learning environment. Many have no experience of schools as such. AMEP teachers are faced with a task way beyond the straightforward teaching of English as a second language.

Research from the Brotherhood of St Laurence has explored the settlement experiences of Iraqi and Sudanese people settling in regional Victoria. Even allowing for specific regional issues, the funding model based on attendance numbers made classes unsustainable. Janet Taylor, who is the Research Coordinator at the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Melbourne, has conducted research into refugee settlement. In her paper ‘Refugees and regional settlement: a simple equation?’ Ms Taylor identifies several key difficulties for refugees in learning English: cost of child care, transport issues, classes for shift workers, diverse learning needs and levels, and varied experiences and background in learning. In addition, if a person is able to get a job, then they must suspend classes in many cases.

These are the current challenges facing those delivering English in a contracting environment focused on cost saving. I am advised that the current funding model averages a student-teacher ratio of 18 to 1, which I find very high for this type of teaching. I am further advised that in local programs that figure can reach 23 to 1. This is an extraordinarily high figure for this level of intensive education. In some cases, private providers are reputed to have a ratio of 30 to 1.

The research I referred to earlier noted that providing for diverse learning needs is difficult. For example, among the Sudanese were women who had no formal schooling and who were unable to read their own language, let alone English. This contrasted with other groups—men—who had learnt a little English at school and who had some tertiary qualifications but who needed high-level English assistance to enable them to undertake further studies.

What is apparent is that the diversity of needs and circumstances requires a multiplicity of learning and funding models. Data collected in the 1990s found that it takes a range of 600 hours to 2,500 hours, depending on educational and language background and the purpose of language learning, to learn a language. It would be useful to have more recent data, but the range in itself indicates that there are extraordinarily diverse ranges of learning needs. One size will not fit all. In order to meet those needs and, I might add, the proposed English language requirements for citizenship, more flexible funding arrangements should be developed.