Last year Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her Asian Century policy, which included the line: “All schools will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language.” Fine ambition, tough assignment. Duncan Graham reports on progress in Indonesia.

Despite her effervescence, teacher Vicki Richardson is surprisingly media shy. “I’d never dream of approaching a journalist,” she said, “that’s just not me”.

Which is a pity because once cornered by The Jakarta Post in Surabaya, the cultural coordinator for Perth’s Tranby College was delighted to tell a good news story about linking with the East Java capital’s  SMAN 5 (State Senior High School 5).

The partnership started in 2009 when the two schools signed up with the Building Relationships through Intercultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement program, less clumsily known as BRIDGE.

The Indonesian section of the program, financed by the Australian government and the private Myer Foundation, has been the most successful, with funding guaranteed till 2015.

However, similar but more costly partnerships with China, South Korea and Thailand are reported to be floundering, with few contacts and the cash evaporating mid 2013.  

Striving: Teacher Vicki Richardson is the cultural coordinator of Perth’s Tranby College, which is working with Surabaya’s SMAN 5 in an exchange program.Started four years before Gillard’s announcement, the BRIDGE school partnerships “provide teachers and students with the opportunity to engage with peers in Asia” through face-to-face visits of teachers spending a week in an Australian school.

So far, there have been 80 Indonesian engagements, though not all have survived, sometimes because the prime drivers, like Richardson and her SMAN 5 counterpart, Abdul Latif, retire or move on to other jobs.

That seems to have been the case with Queensland’s Catholic Aquinas College that partnered with Madrasah Aliyah Negeri (MAN) 3 Malang in 2011. Teachers made visits but there have been no follow-up exchanges.

MAN 3 has a new principal, Ahmad Hidayatullah. “I’ve been occupied with other issues but the school still wants to be involved,” he said. “This is a high priority.”

Teacher Thohir Yoga, who has been to Australia, denied religious differences were the reason for the program stalling. “We’re 200 percent behind this and ready to go,” he said. “We have the money; we just haven’t had replies to our emails.”

They’re not the only ones. An attempt to get Aquinas to comment for this story has also been unsuccessful.

There are more than 9,500 schools in Australia. The goal is for 512 teachers and 209 schools to be involved with the BRIDGE program by 2015.  

“Little steps, little steps,” said Richardson, a self-confessed “Indophile” when questioned about the pace of progress during her 10th visit to Surabaya. At the time, she was on her annual leave.

Continuing: Teacher Thohir Yoga of Madrasah Aliyah Negeri 3 Malang says his school is ready to continue with cultural exchanges in the BRIDGE program with Australia.“It’s taken time for my school and colleagues to recognize the value of this program and the need to understand Indonesia. I deliberately wanted to be involved in Java, to extend knowledge beyond Bali, because Bali isn’t the whole country.

“All the Tranby and SMAN 5 students have been involved with the exchanges for three years which is testimony to their ongoing friendships. This is my personal aim, not sanitized visits and then forgotten.”

Last year, Richardson, who is fluent in Indonesian, was nominated for an Australian award recognizing her work in improving understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Hampering her mission to help lift Australians’ understanding of the people next door is the reality that most high school students stop studying languages two years before graduating to concentrate on topics like math and science. Official figures show less than 6 percent of year 12 students are tackling an Asian language, and even fewer are studying Asia in other subjects, like economics, history and politics.

SMAN 5 was founded in 1957 and has more than 900 students. It has established links with schools in Singapore, the US and Germany.

Smarts: Abdul Latif of SMAN 5 supports the school’s exchanges with Australia.Tranby is a fee-paying 1,000-student college run by the Uniting Church in a middle-class suburb of the Western Australian capital.

Although two SMAN 5 students pulled out when they learned Australians keep dogs as pets, Abdul hasn’t had problems getting parents to pay up to Rp 13 million (US$1,400) for airfare to send a child to Tranby for a fortnight. They stay free with host families who have taken a course on cultural differences, including warnings not to serve their visitors bacon.  

“This is a rich school,” Abdul said, “just take a look at the students’ cars in the parking lot outside. There’s a waiting list.” He realized the advantages of exchange programs several years ago while waiting at an airport and seeing scores of Japanese students heading for the US.  

“Why not Indonesia?” he thought – and set about finding ways to make the idea work. He also has an infectious enthusiasm for exchange programs that must help sway the skeptical and dismissive.

“I never knew we had a neighbor so different,” said Zulino Rizky Hafiz, 17, one of the few boys who’ve been to Tranby. Most exchange students are girls.

“I appreciated the informality of teachers and students feeling free to ask for help, but I didn’t like the way teenage boys and girls get so close.”

Fajar Sartika, 17, who plans to enter medical school, already speaks good English. She also found the learning environment easier and subject choices more acceptable. She doesn’t wear a headscarf but some of her classmates who did were jeered by boys at a seaside town, according to Richardson.

“The Tranby girls robustly defended their visitors’ rights, responding that ‘there’s nothing wrong with Indonesians’,” she said. “Suddenly the reality of racism hit home.”

Australian families sitting down together for evening meals and discussing each other’s activities was also an unusual and pleasing experience; others found the absence of maids and having to share domestic duties a bit disturbing.

“Some teachers think that trying to develop exchange programs is too difficult,” Richardson said. “But I’ve always thought this is the best way to get our kids to understand each other.”

Recently, eight schools from South Sulawesi, Central Kalimantan, Yogyakarta and Jakarta joined the BRIDGE program. Two teachers from each school will travel to Australia in May to boost their English language skills and obtain other training.

— Photos By Duncan Graham