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How does a country's national language policy affect the curriculum and instructional
approaches of a school or a university in that country?"

In Australia, the historical and sociocultural contexts of previous and current language
policies and curriculums in Australia reveal a close relationship between the two. There are
clear and direct federal and state government influences on language education, evident in a
mirrored developmental path in national language policies and language education over
Australias history. The present language policies prioritise literacy in Standard Australian
English. (SAE) For the first time in Australias history, a national curriculum will attempt to
implement this agenda nation-wide, from foundation year through to senior secondary
education. Australian language policy continues to officially recognise the need for
comprehensive English as a Second Language (ESL) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
(ATSI) language education, but in mid-2014 the new national curriculum still contains very
limited ESL and ATSI programs. This reveals that in Australia, the relationship between policy
and curriculum is currently a strong one in terms of prioritisation, but not in the aspect of
recognising that we are a multilingual nation and integrating this holistically into our
instructional approaches.

Context
Australia has been a multilingual society since before English settlement in 1788, with an
estimated number of over 260 Indigenous languages (Fesl, 1987); however, a repressive
culture towards these languages and their speakers (G. McKay, 2011) since 1788, and until
recently, has established a culturally and linguistically English-based society that is still
prevalent today. Our importance of our multilingualism through our ATSI languages, as well
as a rich history of immigration from all over the world, was not officially recognised until in
1982 the federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia convened conferences
around the country calling for a national approach to language issues. (Baldauf & Luke,
1990) This resulted in the release of the National Policy on Languages, (Lo Bianco, 1987) and
its subsequent revisions and updates, explored below. In mid-2014, the many languages
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spoken in Australia other than English still have marginal status and do not enjoy
consideration in the mainstream education system or as official languages in Australia

National Language Policy
In several contemporary articles Austalias National Policy on Languages (Lo Bianco, 1987) is
celebrated as the first national policy of its type and calibre. (Liddicoat, 2013; Lo Bianco &
Aliani, 2013; G. McKay, 2011) It is unfortunate that the comprehensive ad directed
recommendations and goals of this policy remain, in large, unrealised in 2014. The policy
itself was in effect officially for only four years (G. McKay, 2011) and this meant that a lot of
the long-term initiatives it proposed were superseded by new ideas and initiatives under new
governments. Many of the decisions on language policy and education had a basis in
economic rationalism, evident in the two defining features of policies released after 1987.
The first was an emphasis on the improvement of literacy in the English language for all
Australian citizens, introduced in Australias Language - The Australian Language and Literacy
Policy and supplemented by further literacy focused papers and policies. (DEETYA, 1998;
Slaughter, 2009) The second was Asia literacy an umbrella term used to describe the
linguistic reconstruction of Australia as linked to Asia (Lo Bianco & Aliani, 2013, p. 1)
intended to introduce the study of languages of geo-political importance (Lo Bianco, 1987)
The first priority, English literacy, has become an ingrained aspect of the English curriculum,
with an definitive direction in the curriculum towards acquisition of Standard Australian
English (SAE); arguably at the expense of considerations of the needs of ESL learners, with
the only option for the majority who do not have access or eligibility to attend an Intensive
English Centres (IECs) or Intensive English High School (IEHS)
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being the study of the
mainstream English curriculum, at least until stage 6 level.





1
These are the NSW names for centres dedicated to educational services for new arrivals in Australia.
The names for such centres and/or programs vary between states.
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Curriculum and Instruction
In Australia, the national curriculum for English is currently undergoing implementation in
schools, with a number of goals for English Second Language (ESL) Learners that reflect the
emphasis in the current national languages policy for literacy in written and spoken standard
Australian English; for although Australia is a linguistically and culturally diverse country,
participation in many aspects of Australian life depends on effective communication in
Standard Australian English. (ACARA, 2013) To this end, the English curriculum documents
arguably echo the objectives of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)
used for entry to Australian tertiary education with its focus on listening, reading, viewing,
speaking and writing (ACARA, 2013) In this respect, the curriculum aims to produce
secondary school graduates that have standard English proficiency at a level considered
competitive for entry into tertiary study. Despite this, ESL, known in the curriculum as English
as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD) is not given a distinct strand until stage 6 the
final two years of secondary schooling. The national curriculum chose to adopt the approach
of the previous New South Wales syllabus (Board of Studies NSW, 2003) and have no
separate syllabus for the education of second-language speakers of English; rather there is a
system of ESL scales, which do not provide a curriculum for ESL learners (P. McKay,
1994) but instead provide basic outcome indicators of the syntactical and grammatical
knowledge assumed at each stage of the mainstream curriculum. There are no strategies for
how to assist ESL learners to develop this knowledge within the curriculum itself.

Policy and Curriculum
With all education planning, present needs and constraints must be balanced with
projections of future needs and opportunities. (Ferns, 2002) In Australia, it is evident that the
planning of the Australian curriculum had these priorities in mind. The fact that the
languages syllabus is still in draft stage, while the English curriculum is in implementation
phase, suggests that English continues to hold the most powerful position in both language
policy and language education in Australia. In this way, the views and goals of the language
policy makers and the federal government are present in the curriculum; a casualty of this
are the voices of ATSI and ESL stakeholders in the curriculum, and their potential needs and
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interests. There is an evident tension in the new national curriculum in regards to how the
clearly prioritised English curriculum will connect with the draft languages curriculum. It has
already been decided that while this curriculum is in effect, English will continue to be the
medium of instruction and the prioritised language in our curriculum and instructional
approaches. What remains to be decided is the level of importance and significance that will
be placed on the study of other languages as subjects under the languages curriculum.

This report has revealed that as a multilingual society, Australia has competing demands to
consider in the development of language policy and the implementation of this in education
through curriculum and instructional approaches. It is evident that the two processes and
their outcomes are closely linked; and in Australia at present the competing pressures of the
need for English literacy, the need to maintain ATSI languages, and the need to consider our
growing ESL learner population have manifested in a national curriculum that has attempted
to separate these demands. The result clearly demonstrates the prioritisation of these
demands; there it one implemented curriculum dedicated to the study of Standard Australian
English, and one draft curriculum for the study of all other languages including ATSI, and no
curriculum for the ESL learners in our Australian secondary classrooms, apart from a
provisional strand within the English curriculum, only at senior secondary level.

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References

ACARA. (2013). English F-10 Curriculum. Retrieved 11 April, 2014, from
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/English
Baldauf, R. B., & Luke, A. (Eds.). (1990). Language planning and education in Australasia and
the South Pacific. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Board of Studies NSW. (2003). English Years 7-10 Syllabus. Sydney: Board of Studies NSW.
DEETYA. (1998). Literacy for all : the challenge for Australian schools : Commonwealth literacy
policies for Australian schools. Canberra: Department of Employment, Education,
Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA).
Ferns, M. (2002). Language policy, literacy development, and book sector development. In J.
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& local effects. Melbourne: Language Australia.
Fesl, E. (1987). Language death among Australian languages. Australian review of applied
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Lo Bianco, J. (1987). National policy on languages. Canberra: Australian Government
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Lo Bianco, J., & Aliani, R. (2013). Language Planning and Student Experiences [electronic
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Publications.
McKay, G. (2011). Policy and indigenous languages in Australia. Australian review of applied
linguistics, 34(3), 297-319.
McKay, P. (1994). ESL development : language and literacy in schools project (2nd ed.). Deakin,
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Slaughter, Y. (2009). Money and policy make languages go round: language programs in
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