Our Lady’s College, Annerley To Start Teaching Auslan In 2023

Our Lady’s College at Annerley will start offering Auslan or the Australian Sign Language in 2023, making it the first Catholic high school in Brisbane to do so.

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In a social media post, Our Lady’s College announced that they will begin teaching Auslan as an ACARA (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) accredited course to Year 7 and 8 students starting this year.

The Catholic girls’ school, located at Chester Road, will also become the first school under Brisbane Catholic Education to teach the subject.

To do so, the school has already employed a teacher who will be co-teaching with Mrs Joanna Caldwell, their expert languages teacher.

“This was a carefully considered curriculum addition to support our already very inclusive and culturally rich school, but Auslan also offers a great career pathway for young women,” said Ms Andree Rice, principal at Our Lady’s College, Annerley.

The community at Our Lady’s College, Annerley believes it’s a wonderful initiative, with some hoping it would lead the way to the introduction of Auslan as a future language option in schools nationwide.

According to the Department of Education, nine schools in Queensland were offered Auslan as a LOTE (Languages Other Than English) subject back in 2020, with around 700 schools taking the subject. The numbers doubled in 2021, with 14 state schools teaching Auslan and 1,400 students taking it.

Some of the contributors to the increased interest in Auslan include the bushfires and the introduction of Covid-19 press briefings using the said language. In fact, many interpreters, including Mikey Webb, have become a regular feature at press conferences.

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“The pandemic and the bushfires have brought the issue of access to emergency information in Auslan back in front of mind and we have recently seen significant progress on access for Deaf Seniors,” said Brett Casey, CEO Deaf Services and the Deaf Society.