What the community is saying

Social justice

“I am dismayed by this decision. As a parent active in the campaign to save the program when it was 1st axed by stealth by the former principal, I am astounded at the casual approach taken given the previous Ministerial intervention to guarantee retention of the program. What a loss.” – R. Boyce

“This is outrageous that there was such little consultation and evaluation involved before scrapping the only Vietnamese bilingual program in Victoria. I really hope that this is reconsidered given that Vietnamese is one of the most spoken languages at home and this decision ﬂies in the face of the community in which it is supposed to serve.” – A. Nguyen

“Gentrification and white folks love to brush important cultural education aside in favour of more white or “acceptable” practices. These instances are often done with little to no research or regard for the negative cultural impact they ill haveon students and local communities.” – S. Taitt

“Lack of language teachers is constantly thrown around by schools when staffing becomes inconvenient. As a language teacher myself I have seen this happen. Vietnamese is incredibly important to the Footscray snd wider Western suburbs community – a bilingual program should be valued and saved at all costs. It benefits every single students in a number of ways.” – A. Wareham

“I used to work at Footscray PS and they tried to get rid of the program then. It is the only one of its kind and is a great resource for the community. It would be such a shame to lose it.” – E. Grills

“We proud Australian-Vietnamese condemn the disgraced self-interest decision made by the principal of Footscray Primary School shutting the bilingual program without consulting our community. Footscray has a long history where many thousands of Vietnamese refugee people ﬁrst anchored and found home for the last 45 years. The community also have full support from governments of all levels to build Vietnamese Museum right here in the very
heart of Footscray. We, the Vietnamese background citizen of this nation, has the right to demand for the program to
re-instate to give our children a sense of identity, the respect that we deserve.” – D. Nguyen

“It is important to respect and retain the transmission of cultural heritage of migrant communities in Melbourne in face of revanchist urban gentrification” – J. Pope