Lalor North Primary School leads Victoria in Bilingual Education.

Our Macedonian Bilingual Program began in 1985 and has now reached its highest ever enrolment. Our Greek Bilingual Program began in 1977 and is the oldest continually operating Bilingual Program in Victoria. Our two bilingual programs coexist with great unity, with our teachers working, planning and collaborating across our three programs (Macedonian, Greek and standard) and our students learning, playing and interacting with great warmth, connection and respect across the school.

Our Macedonian Bilingual Program enjoys tremendous support from our local community as well as being internationally recognised by the government of the Republic of North Macedonia.

Many studies have shown that speaking two or more languages is a great asset to the cognitive process. The brains of bilingual people operate differently than single language speakers and these differences offer several mental benefits including improvement in memory and in decision making skills, staving off Alzheimer’s and dementia, boosting confidence, deepening your connection to other cultures through communication and appreciation for the traditions, religions, arts and history and seeing the world through opportunities to study or work abroad.

Like many things, language learning is best started young, while children have the ability to learn a language completely and easily.

Our bilingual programs offer content-based immersive teaching in English and Macedonian, which are delivered by qualified language teachers. Our programs operate under the guidelines set by the Department of Education and Training. Children are immersed in the target language from the start of their schooling for half of each day. Through targeted, explicit teaching in fun, real life learning situations, children quickly acquire vocabulary and begin to respond in the target language. As children progress through the school, the expectations increase in regard to the production of the language. Teaching at students’ point of need enables each child to learn at their own pace.

Learning a second language does not interfere with the development of the first language. In the early stages of second language acquisition, children hearing two languages can sometimes mix words from two languages but this is temporary. In the long term, the second language will provide thinking, social, cultural and economic advantages.
You do not need to be of Macedonian background to enrol in the Macedonian Bilingual Program. New students are welcomed at all year levels.

We continue to accept enrolments for the Macedonian Bilingual Program for 2020 and are now accepting enrolments for 2021.

Lalor North Primary School Website