ATAR points bonus recommended to increase Asian language studies

Asian language education in Australia facing existential crisis, parliamentary report warns Thu 2 Jul 2026 at 2:52pm Ruby O'Connell likes something most Australian students don't. "Learning a new language just gives you a deeper understanding of the world," the year 8 student told the ABC. "It also gives you good problem-solving skills that can link to so many other activities in the real world." The St Patrick's College Townsville student chose Japanese in year 7 after learning other languages in primary school. But she is part of a dwindling cohort across Australia. A major parliamentary report handed down this week found there was a looming crisis in Australia's understanding of Asia, with students not studying Asian languages at year 12 or at university level at high enough rates. The report warns that Indonesian language teaching is set to be "functionally extinct" within the next five years, while only 3.3 per cent of Australian year 12 students studied Chinese, Indonesian or Japanese in 2023, down from 4.7 per cent in 2012. It found that domestic enrolments in South-East Asian languages at Australian universities fell by 75 per cent between 2005 and 2024. The only university to offer a dedicated program on South Asia is the Australian National University, the report said. The committee chair, Labor MP and Special Envoy for the Indian Ocean Tim Watts, told the ABC that Australia's Asian language capability was close to falling off a cliff. "Of the 1 million domestic university students in Australia, barely 500 are studying Indonesian language, fewer than when [Sir Robert] Menzies was prime minister,"he said. "The institutions that build Australia's Asia capability now face an existential crisis." The report said only two Australian universities offered courses in Hindi, while just 17 students completed honours in Chinese studies with language at Australian universities in the five years to 2021. "China invests heavily in understanding Australia. Australia's education system is no longer investing seriously in understanding China," the report said. It also warned that the slide in Australia's Asia capability threatened to seriously undermine national prosperity and security. The committee was told Asia will account for 53 per cent of the global population and nearly half of global GDP by the end of the decade, while four of Australia's five top trading partners are China, Japan, South Korea and India. Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the ABC that the figures in the report were "worse than I thought, but they're heading in the direction that I thought". "It's a very challenging thing to turn around, but we do need to turn it around," she said. "Because ultimately we have a national asset which is we're a multicultural country, and we've got that capability of engaging with other countries, and that helps us be more secure." More ATAR points for Asian language studies One of the report's 34 recommendations is to offer students five extra Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) points for studying some languages, including Mandarin, Indonesian and Hindi in year 12. Mr Watts said that an "eat your vegetables approach" would not work, and the government was considering new ideas to incentivise more students to study languages. "We can't force this. What we need to do is build intrinsic interest [in languages] for students," he told the ABC. "We've got to give them incentives to want to do this themselves." Twins Shagun and Shakshi Kaveti are learning Japanese at Mount Gravatt High School in Brisbane and come from a bilingual family. Their mother can speak Hindi and their father can speak Sinhalese. Neither of the twins grew up speaking their native language, Hindi, which made them more inclined to learn a language if extra ATAR points were on offer. "I think it'd be more beneficial to learn an Asian language because people tend to travel to countries when they're older," Shagun Kaveti said. "And them learning a language from any of those countries helps them get around places easier," she said. Claire Paterson's twins, Rudy and Billie, study Chinese and Italian, respectively, in year 8 at Glen Waverley Secondary College in Melbourne. If both continued their language studies in year 12, Rudy Paterson would get the extra ATAR points for learning Chinese under the proposal, but Billie Paterson would not for learning Italian. "I definitely think it's an incentive, I think it's great … I think that it should be offered to all languages," Ms Paterson said. Other students like 13-year-old Evelyn said earning extra ATAR points "could be a failsafe for people who might not do as well in subjects like maths or science". The committee has also made a host of other recommendations, including immersion programs overseas and establishing a network of regional centres of excellence across the country called Asia Leader Schools to help build in-classroom teaching. It also calls for a new consortium of schools that can work together to cut the cost and logistics of overseas trips to Asia for intensive language programs. Australia's 'fruit salad' language approach Experts welcomed the government's move to try and revivify Asian languages. Allan Patience, an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne's School of Social and Political Sciences, told the ABC the report painted a "dire" picture of language education in Australia. He said the key problem was "a fruit salad approach", where different Asian languages were often taught each term or each year across the education system. "This country's Asia-ignorance is a serious challenge for its security and prosperity,"Dr Patience said. "Australians need to develop the educated confidence to think of themselves as an integral part of Asia, even to think of themselves as Asians, clearly understanding that 'Asian' is a vast term covering myriad historical, cultural, political and economic realities." The ATAR-point boost for learning Asian languages alone might not be enough to fix the problem, he added. He was also concerned that the report does not spell out what "Asia capability" means beyond language. "Asian language teaching in the past, and often presently, in Australia has been mainly about vocabulary and grammar exercises, the deadliest way to teach or learn a language. No wonder students are avoiding this," he said. "To be successful, languages must be taught in their richly cultural, historical, political, literary, artistic, musical and performative contexts to bring the languages alive." He said creating a network of formally linked Australian and Asian schools to facilitate cross-cultural learning, as recommended by the report, would help. He said he was also supportive of establishing "Asia Leader Schools", which he said could help implement several of the recommendations.