Search

Using Australian census data, the paper examines the incidence of poor English competency in Australia from 1981 onwards. The paper examines English competency in relation to various characteristics such as sex, age, language spoken, visa type, citizenship, duration of residence and location. It finds that there was a sharp rise in the numbers of people not speaking English well between the 2011 and 2016 Censuses and special attention is given to this rise in the paper. Recently, the Australian Government unsuccessfully legislated for the introduction of a requirement of English competency at the level of IELTS 6 (the commonly used university entrance level) as a condition for the award of Australian citizenship. The paper argues that this test would have led to a very large number of disenfranchised Australian permanent residents and this would be a highly undesirable result. Nevertheless, employment and social participation are strongly influenced by English competency and residents with poor English are disadvantaged. The policy suggestion is made that participation in a course of English language training for those without functional English skills could be made a precondition of the award of permanent residence—without the application of a passing grade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In broad terms, the division in Europe between countries with very low fertility and countries with sustainable fertility matches Esping-Anderson's classification of the same countries into 'conservative' and 'social democratic' (Esping-Anderson ). A central difference between these two types relates to their preferred models of the family. The conservative countries hold more to the 'breadwinner' model of the family while the social democratic countries seek higher levels of gender equity within the family and in the workplace. State support in both conservative and social democratic countries is designed to be consistent with these differing views of the family. Would we then not expect fertility to be very low in Esping-Anderson's third group of countries, the 'liberal' countries, essentially English-speaking countries? By the Esping-Anderson definition, liberal countries are notable for their lack of support for families from public sources. Instead, according to Esping-Anderson, families must rely upon market provision for the services that they may need to combine work and family and they must rely on market employment to generate the income required to support their children. Contrary to this theory, whether measured by contemporary cross-sectional fertility or completed cohort fertility, with the exception of Canada, English-speaking countries now have the highest fertility rates among the countries that were classified by Esping-Anderson. Given the strength of theoretical explanation that arises from comparative studies of fertility in Europe, the paper examines why fertility in English-speaking countries seems not to follow expectation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]