Playing the system

[IntoTheNewWorld]

I would still kick out Vietnamese internationals into a first language stream at least. They break the system too much.

[stonecold]

I don't get it how people can be enrolled in ESL and CSL at the same time.

VCAA are morons.  How can you have two second languages and no first language.

[jejak]

I would still kick out Vietnamese internationals into a first language stream at least. They break the system too much.

Yeah, I think that is the right thing to do. At least that goes some way towards fixing the problem.

VCAA are morons.  How can you have two second languages and no first language.

Outside of a school context, I agree that it's bloody ridiculous that someone can have two 2nd langs and no 1st lang. However - just to play devil's advocate - maybe VCAA assumed that it's possible to have two first languages, but not be sufficiently advanced in either to be examined, at 1st language level, for the purposes of year 12.

For instance - and I'm not Chinese Malaysian, so this might be an incorrect example - perhaps if you had to speak Malay, Chinese dialects and English all your life, you mightn't have those high-level skills in any language that would be required for, say, a literature examination. This is kind of improbable from a developmental perspective, but that might explain VCAA's thinking.

Alternatively, it's just an administrative screwup that they don't know how to fix...