By Christine de Kock
SUDANESE youngsters will get more help in developing their numeracy and literacy skills through the soon-to-be established River Nile Learning Centre, in Footscray.
Father Don Edgar, of the St John’s Anglican Church in Footscray, is behind the initiative launched last Friday.
“What we are launching is the fact that we are incorporated, and we are asking people to support us,” Fr Edgar said.
“The reason we can’t say that we are starting up is because the education department hasn’t yet signed off on it.
“We are hoping that will be soon. It is not a school, it is a learning centre.”
The centre will provide a bridging course for children leaving the Western English Language Centre and starting high school.
Fr Edgar said the centre helped newly arrived migrants for a maximum of one year.
Students were then expected to begin high school, but many continue to have problems with numeracy and literacy skills.
“There is a limited time that the students can stay at the language school because the government can fund them for only a year at most,” Fr Edgar said.
He said the centre would be structured like a school, with perhaps six to 10 students per class.
It would also have a close relationship with the Western English Language Centre.
“We have a memorandum of understanding with the English Language School. The principal is on the board, and there will be a member of the Department of Education there as well,” he said.
The church expects the Department of Education and Training to support the learning centre by paying the teachers’ wages.
“We will provide all the teaching materials, which we hope to raise with grants.
“That is why we want people to come to the launch,” he said.
“We’d like to open the learning centre this July, but we must not assume that the Department of Education is going to give it the all clear that quickly.”
Fr Edgar has worked with the Sudanese community for 14 years, and was among the first to teach English to refugees.
“One of the big hurdles for this group of immigrants was education, because of the trauma they suffered and because of their discontinued education.
“Some didn’t even start school until they were about 11, so we realised just fitting these children into our normal school system – even after all the help given by the department through specialised teachers and aides – we needed something more than had ever been thought of before.
“These children will be unemployable, if they do not get an education which helps them cope with this society,” Fr Edgar said.
