The impact of policy settings on language education in Australian schools: a comparative analysis of language enrolments and attrition in New South Wales and Victoria

ABSTRACT

We explore the impact of language education policy on language enrolments and provision in primary and secondary government schools In Australia, specifically in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, which have strikingly different policy settings. NSW adopts a ‘weak but flexible’ policy, mandating a very limited minimum time allocation for language study but allowing multiple entry points at senior secondary level. Victoria adopts a ‘strong’ mandatory policy, requiring continuous commitment to language study. Using available data, the study first compares enrolment data trends overall before considering the most widely taught languages at primary and secondary level, with additional analysis of a single secondary student cohort. Amongst the findings, we observe a marked reversal of previously falling language enrolments over time in Victoria, with substantially higher numbers overall compared to NSW where numbers have instead fallen, thus seemingly attesting to the impact of effective mandatory policies. While neither policy setting seems impactful enough in attracting and sustaining language study through to senior secondary level, a seeming pattern of convergence at this level masks at least partly the effect of access to alternative learning mechanisms on enrolments, resulting in much more frequent completion of Year 12 language study in Victoria.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• language policy
• government schools
• language enrolments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As recorded in December 2022, out of a population of 26,268,359 people, the population of NSW was 8,238,800 and of Victoria 6,704,300, cf. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/dec-2022.

2 Cf. https://www.educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/languages/

Cf. https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-languages

https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/languages-education/guidance/promote-learning-language.

3 Cf. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/languages. We are grateful to Ms Teresa Naso, Principal of the NSW School of Languages, for some of the information regarding NSW.

4 Cf. also https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/understanding-the-curriculum/k-6-curriculum-requirements.

5 Cf. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/languages/s6.

6 Cf. NSW Department of Education. It needs to be borne in mind that individual students may also be enrolled in and undertaking more than one language course in the same year.

7 https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/languages-education/policy.

8 The data we rely on were the most recently available at the time of writing this article: Victorian data are for 2011–2020 and for NSW 2012–2021.Throughout the article in our analysis percentages have been rounded.

9 This estimate has been calculated by applying the overall percentage of enrolments in government and non-government schools in NSW in 2021, i.e. 58% compared to 42% (ACARA, 2021).

10 As mentioned in Section ‘Current challenges in language education in Australia’, across all school sectors in Victoria the proportion of students to complete Year 12 language study was an even higher 22% (by far the highest proportion in Australia) – a reflection of the greater prestige of language study in the independent and Catholic school sectors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antonia Rubino

Antonia Rubino is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Sydney. She has research interests in multilingualism in migration contexts, educational linguistics and language policy. She has conducted extensive research on different generations of Australian Italians, focusing on the intergenerational transmission of heritage languages and their educational and policy implications. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

John Hajek

John Hajek is Professor of Italian Studies and director of the Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-cultural Communication (RUMACCC) at the University of Melbourne. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has a broad range of research interests including different aspects of language education in Australia’s education system.