At benchmark?: Evaluating the Northern Territory bilingual education program
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Date
2014Publisher
University of MelbourneAffiliation
School of Languages and Linguistics - ConferencesMetadata
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©2014 Samantha Disbray
This paper was presented at the 44th Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, 2013, at the University of Melbourne. All papers in the volume have been double blind peer-reviewed. Volume edited by Lauren Gawne and Jill Vaughan.
ISBN: 978-0-9941507-0-7
Abstract
The Northern Territory (NT) bilingual program set out a range of goals to provide remote Indigenous communities a bilingual, biliterate and bicultural education and achieved a range of outstanding successes. Yet, when the NT government closed the program in 2008, these achievements were not recognised. The only measure of the program’s success was the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test results for the Northern Territory that year. This paper looks at a range of criteria for evaluating the bilingual program, such as the stated goals listed of the program and those articulated by Indigenous people.