The Victorian Government has announced a language education plan that see all prep students learning a language by 2015. New languages scholarships will be available to government school teachers and teacher trainees as part of the government's plan to improve the quality of language teaching.

 

State Education Minister Martin Dixon and State Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship Nicholas Kotsiras announced the new scholarships at the launch of The Victorian Government's Vision for Languages Education plan in Melbourne.

 

"Reforming languages education and reversing the decline in languages teaching over the last decade is one of our major challenges," Mr Dixon said.

 

"The number of government primary schools offering a language has declined by almost 30 per cent in the past 10 years, which just isn't good enough."

 

Under the plan, the Victorian Government will aim to introduce the following by 2012:

  • Offer Languages Start-up grants to government schools to help them introduce languages programs
  • Offer scholarships of up to $20,000 for undergraduate teachers and $50,000 for government school teachers to become qualified languages teachers;
  • Offer a Certificate IV in Community Languages Teaching at Victoria's TAFE institutes.

Mr Dixon said the Victorian Government had already:

  • Trained 30 languages teachers to teach other subjects such as science or history in another language;
  • Funded 14 school clusters involving 103 schools to trial new approaches to languages education;
  • Undertaken research into languages education in high performing international jurisdictions to inform the development of a strong rationale for languages learning;
  • Established a Ministerial Advisory Council for a multilingual and multicultural Victoria;
  • Provided $16.3 million to accredited Community Languages Schools to support after-school-hours languages education for students;
  • Provided $280,000 to enhance the Education Department's sister school program, linking Victorian schools with schools across Australia and overseas to enable students to practise talking to each other in different languages.