Abstract
This chapter is an adaptation of a paper presented by the first author, Tobias Ngardinithi Nganbe from Wadeye school, to an Indigenous Catholic Community Schools Leadership Meeting in 2009. The meeting took place at the beginning of the first school year after the announcement of the First Four Hours of Every School Day in English Policy. Tobias and his colleagues expressed their community’s concern about the media’s attention to Wadeye students’ performance on standardised tests at Year 3 and 5, as this focus was overshadowing first language and culture learning. They raise concerns about the appropriateness of administering mainstream tests so early in children’s English language and literacy learning, and the negative impact that this has on recognising and supporting instruction in Murrinhpatha, the children’s first language.
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Nganbe, T.N. (2017). Defending Our Program at Wadeye. In: Devlin, B., Disbray, S., Devlin, N. (eds) History of Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory. Language Policy, vol 12. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2078-0_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2078-0_15
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