Client demand, policy research and lobbying

This paper reports policy research into how the administrative policies in the NSW state secondary system affected the delivery of Languages education in the period 1980 to 1986. It traces how schools were timetabled and led in the post-Wyndham era and how this increasingly marginalised Languages, often on the grounds that the subject area was ‘elitist’. It is shown, however, that, by the mid 1980s, three forces were able to challenge the trend; demand by clients, the findings of policy research, and lobbying at the national level concerned with multiculturalism.

The learning of a second language must be regarded as a necessary part of total personality formation in the modern world ... Somehow, therefore, a second language must become part of the total educational process, not something reserved for the gifted, but a normal educational experience for the ordinary child.

(Dutton 1972)