Government invests in community schools to enable better engagement with our region
For decades Australia has been told its future lies in Asia, but Australia has allowed the teaching of Asian languages to lapse.
Now, with warnings that the country’s regional fluency is nearing crisis point, the Albanian government is investing in a quiet Australian multicultural institution – community language schools – in a bid to rebuild a talent many fear.
Nine organizations in NSW, Victoria and the ACT will share $2.5 million under the new Asian Fluency program, supporting students aged 7 to 12 to achieve fluency in more than 15 languages, including Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Punjabi and Yue (Cantonese).
The funding, which is part of the government’s wider $25 million Community Language Schools programme, will support curriculum development, increase retention in language learning and increase activity in schools often run by volunteers and migrant communities.
Amid growing alarm over Australia’s declining Asian literacy, ministers are casting the initiative as something bigger than a multiculturalism policy; part education reform, part strategic repair.
In 2012, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard published the Asian Century white paper. Among his goals was that all students could study Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian or Japanese (the so-called big four).
Since then, the proportion of secondary school students studying Chinese, Japanese or Indonesian has fallen by 25 percent to just 3.3 percent. University enrollments in Southeast Asian languages have fallen 75 percent since 2004. In 2023, only 500 of more than 1 million domestic students in universities are enrolled in Bahasa Indonesia.
Given these trends, experts warn the Indonesian language could disappear from Australian schools by 2031.
Ministers increasingly define this erosion as a problem of sovereign capacity.
Deputy Minister of Multicultural Affairs Julian Hill said the government’s separate $5 million fluency initiative, designed to help more students pursue Asian languages into grade 12, aims to reverse these trends.
“Australia’s future prosperity depends on our ability to engage securely with our region, which is the fastest growing region in the world,” Hill said.
“Having more Australians who can speak the languages of our biggest trading partners and neighbors is a huge benefit… opening up more employment opportunities and career pathways for students and improving economic ties with our friends and neighbours.”
Hill argued that community language schools, often seen as heritage preservation, should instead be understood as “critical national capability”.
He also advocated for multilingualism in a broader civic sense.
This thinking was reinforced by strategic voices.
Hugh White, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Australian National University, warned at a recent parliamentary hearing that Australia will need much greater linguistic and cultural fluency to navigate a region defined by sharper strategic competition.
“You need to be able to go to each of these capitals and talk to them with the kind of linguistic fluency, conceptual fluency, and cultural fluency that we automatically accept and can apply when we go to London or Washington,” White said. “The stakes are going to be so high for us.”
This argument expanded the debate beyond education; thus language learning is not just about inheritance or employability, but also about diplomacy, intelligence, commerce and influence.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said Australia’s interests required us to engage more consistently and more deeply with the region.
“When young Australians learn Asian languages, they can develop the confidence, relationships and ability to engage more effectively with our region,” he says.
There is also symbolism where the government is betting.
Mainstream school systems have been struggling for years with declining demand for second languages, teacher shortages and curriculum pressures. Community language schools, which often operate in borrowed classrooms on weekends, have survived largely thanks to immigrant communities.
Generations of children in the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney have spent Saturdays at Greek school, Chinese school, Punjabi classes or Vietnamese language classes.
Tenzin Jugney, 16, has been studying at the Tibetan Children’s School in Newcastle and the Hunter Region for more than a decade. He arrived at the age of three, and Tibetan lessons became his strongest connection to his language, culture and community; This is especially important in a country where the Tibetan population is small and spread over large distances.
“I truly believe that the Tibetan school is extremely important and useful,” he said, “an environment where I can socialize with other Tibetans… learn my own culture, language and traditions.”
Annabel Tang studied for three years in Melbourne at the RLY Chinese Culture and Language Academy in Nunawading, completing the language up to VCE. The child of a Vietnamese mother and a Chinese father, he grew up speaking English at home, spoke fluent Vietnamese but was determined to understand his father’s language.
In her part-time job at Chemist Warehouse, she uses Chinese to help customers who have difficulty with English, guiding them through medication instructions and making sure they feel understood and supported.
“Most of the patients I interact with are Chinese, so my high school education definitely allows me to not only counsel patients on taking medications, but also help them navigate the healthcare system if they are a little lost,” he said.
Projects supported as part of the funding round include studies through Macquarie University, the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University. The emphasis is on curriculum and resources that will benefit schools nationally.
The Commonwealth says it has invested $40.6 million in community language schools since 2023, including funding for nearly 90 new schools. Whether it can reverse the decades-long decline is another question.
In a country whose security and prosperity have been repeatedly told it will be shaped in the Indo-Pacific, the government is betting that rebuilding fluency can begin not in embassies or universities but in Saturday classrooms, where it has quietly never quite disappeared.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up for our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Canberra. He is a former European correspondent.Connect via email.
