The Current State of Japanese Language Education in Australian Schools

3.6.4 Community Languages Schools (Cont.)

As the number of longer-term sojourners and settlers increase, many schools have changed their focus to cater for students who have been born and raised in Australia. In some cases, new schools have been established. As well as providing classes focusing on Japanese itself, students often study other areas such as maths and social studies, following the Japanese curriculum and taught in Japanese. One informant pointed out that, apart from the formal study, such classes are important in establishing a sense of identity for the somewhat scattered Japanese community, and in providing a peer group with whom to speak Japanese.

While full statistics have not been collected for this report, informants reported significant increases in enrolments in the major capital cities, especially at the lower primary level. The competence of students ranges from very low to very high, albeit generally somewhat lower in terms of literacy compared to students of the same age who have been educated in Japan. Many students visit Japan regularly with their families, and are increasingly using web-based technologies to access personal networks in Japan as well as material in Japanese while they are in Australia. It is significant that opportunities to use Japanese in the community are no longer restricted only to the community physically located in Australia, but include direct links with Japan and Japanese all over the world.

The curriculum used in the community schools is generally based on Japanese school curriculums. There has been no Australian curriculum suitable for home-background learners available. In addition, the Japanese community is a highly mobile one. Students go back and forth between Australia and Japan temporarily or permanently at various levels, so alignment with Japanese curriculums has been appropriate (although this may change as the numbers of long-term sojourners increase). Australia has for the first time moved to develop a senior secondary curriculum suitable for Heritage learners, and it is important that local authorities and the Japanese community are closely involved to ensure the curriculum is suitable for the community.

Community school classes following a separate curriculum typically stop at middle school level, both because the curriculum becomes more demanding and because students in senior secondary are unable to devote time to study which will not contribute to their university entrance scores. Some schools offer senior secondary classes following the standard Australian senior secondary curriculum for Japanese, both as a first and second language.

Table 5: Provision of Japanese through Schools of Languages and Distance Education 2009

State/Territory	No. of Centres	Metropolitan	Country	Distance Education	Types of courses	Number of students
New South Wales Saturday School of Community Languages	1	1	0	No	Background speakers only Years 7–12	45
SA School of Languages	1	1	0	No	Continuers Years 8–12	19
					Stage 1 & 2 Beginners	42
					Background Speakers	23
Victorian School of Languages	9	6	3	Yes	Second Language Years 1–6	55
					Second Language Years 7–12	437
					First Language Years 11–12	33
WA School of Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE)	–	–	–	Yes	Primary Years 3–7	368
					Secondary	43
Northern Territory Distance Learning Service	–	–	–	Yes	N/A	N/A
Qld Schools of Distance Education Virtual Schooling Service	–	–	–	Yes	N/A	N/A

Table note 1: Student numbers for NT and Qld distance education courses were unavailable. In some states and territories these numbers are counted in the total numbers of students studying Japanese.