For an innovative educational enterprise to prosper a number of contributing and mutually dependent factors have to operate simultaneously. In the case of the Northern Territory Bilingual Education Program these major factors or inputs are: sufficient appropriately trained staff to fill the specialist tasks both in the schools and head office, sufficient financial resources to provide consumables (software) and wages for Aboriginal writers, and a sound philosophy about such matters as the interrelationships between cognitive development, first language development, second language development and academic growth, and the importance of timing to achieve the optimum results from these interrelationships.

In the Northern Territory the Commonwealth Government, and more recently the N.T. Government, has provided adequate specialist staffing and financial resources for the fifteen schools in which the program currently operates. One of the ironies of the history of bilingual education both here and overseas is that the provisions of more resources for its implementation has not necessarily been paralleled by an increasingly wise philosophy or educational model under which the program could be implemented. This paper will focus on a discussion of various research findings and educational principles which should influence the development of our understanding about the relationship between first and second language development and cognitive and academic growth, and more particularly the effect of timing in these matters.

Before getting into the body of this paper the provision of a brief history of the theoretical background to its major theme might be helpful. In one sense bilingual education has passed through two phases of understanding and is now entering a third phase. The first phase is represented by the UNESCO (1953) statement – “It is axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child is his mother tongue”. We could call this phase the language explanation for the academic success or failure of minority language children. The Indians and Australian Aborigines performed poorly at school because they were not taught first in their mother language.

The Aboriginal Community College was establsihed within Torrens C.A.E. as a direct result of a repeated request from the Adelaide and wider South Australian Aboriginal community for adult education. Several years of negotiations and planning culminated in the establishment of the College of Aboriginal Education which accepted the first intake of students in 1973. Thus, the College was designed to serve the perceived needs of the Aboriginal community. It did not observe and analyse the community and then dictate courses and structures which it decided the community ought to have or “needed”. Community needs were stipulated by the community, and the prime understanding was that the voice of the community should guide the College’s operations both through representation on the Management Committee and through internal individual control of learning programs. The College, then, was to cater for the changing perceived needs of the Aboriginal community through individually structured learning areas and processes. In 1975 the College was re-sited in its present premises at 72 Brougham Place, North Adelaide.

Professor Watts’ (1980) review article of Fifteen Thousand Hours: Secondary Schools and Their Effects on Children was a welcome, optimistic view of the positive effect schools can have on pupils. It was particularly welcome for the optimistic view that teachers and schools can achieve something in the area of Aboriginal education. Watts reviewed this book against the background reality that many teachers of Aborigines

While accepting Watts’ view, I will argue that an overly optimistic view of the possibilities of schooling for Aboriginal children can be just as debilitating as the pessimistic view that broader structural inequalities such as poverty, poor housing, poor health have to be redressed before teachers and schools can achieve anything. To this extent it will be argued that teachers need to be positive about what they and schools can achieve. Teachers need to be aware of the specific ways in which schools can make a difference. 15,000 Hours… outlines some of these.