Asian vision 'will cost us billions'

REALISING the education ambitions contained in Julia Gillard's Asia white paper could cost billions of dollars.

REALISING the education ambitions contained in Julia Gillard's Asia white paper could cost billions of dollars, with a leading vice-chancellor predicting the government would have to find an extra $10 billion a year in research funding if it were to double the number of Australian universities in the global top 100.

The goal of bringing the four priority Asian languages into Australian school classrooms could also be a significant expense, with key Asian education research groups predicting it would require thousands of extra teachers and cost billions of dollars.

"It depends how you do it, but if each (of the 10,000) schools has at least one teacher in an Asian language, that's thousands of teachers," Asian Studies Association of Australia president Purnendra Jain said.

"It's a tall order at this stage. It's billions of dollars and a medium- to long-term design and implementation. First, the federal government needs to put in some money . . . and state and territory governments need to come on board as well."

The Asia Education Foundation yesterday estimated it would cost about $100 million a year to double the number of students studying an Asian or other foreign language.

University of Technology, Sydney vice-chancellor Ross Milbourne, an economist, estimated about $10bn a year would have to be pumped into the sector to bring the additional five institutions into the global top 10 of the Shanghai rankings. His estimate is based on how much extra research income Australia's clutch of mid-ranked universities would need to match that of institutions just inside the top 100.

His analysis assumes increased research funding would need to be pumped into the sector as a whole -- "lifting all boats" -- rather than picking winners.

Professor Milbourne said the lower-ranked candidates for top 100 status among Australian universities had an average research income of $50m-$60m a year, which would have to rise to at least $372m in annual research income, matching the US Case Western Reserve University, which holds the No 99 spot in the Shanghai ranking.

"That implies you have to add $10bn a year to the higher education budget and then . . . wait about 15 years for the research to produce an impact and citations (to influence rankings)," he said.

Australia has five institutions in the top 100 of the Shanghai-based league table, which is dominated by universities with strong research programs. As well as increasing the global rankings of our universities, the white paper, unveiled in Sydney by the Prime Minister on Sunday, sets a series of ambitious education goals, including elevating the nation's schools system into the world's top five and giving every school student the chance for continuous study of one of four priority Asian languages -- Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian.

As Ms Gillard and new Asian Century Minister Craig Emerson began selling their vision for Australia to unlock the gains of Asia's burgeoning middle class, the states lashed out at the federal government's decision to link Gonski funding to the teaching of Asian languages.

Dr Emerson said yesterday the states would be denied education funding under the $6.5bn Gonski funding model if they did not supply the teachers needed to provide all students with the ability to access at least one "priority" Asian language.

School Education Minister Peter Garrett, who will have a teleconference with state ministers tomorrow about Gonski funding, refused to say how much the Asian language blitz would cost or even how many additional teachers would be required to teach either Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese to students. The government has emphasised the role of the National Broadband Network in delivering language education.

The Asia Education Foundation yesterday estimated it would cost about $100m a year to double the number of students studying an Asian, or other foreign, language.

Executive director Kathe Kirby said Australia had previously doubled the number of students studying an Asian language under a Keating government program that ran from 1995 to 2002 when it was cut by the Howard government. Based on the money invested in that program, the AEF estimates in today's dollars it would cost at least $100m a year for 10 years to double the number of students studying an Asian language, or about $33 a student per year for every student in the school system.

At present, about 18 per cent of students study an Asian language in primary and high school, but many drop it before Year 12, when the proportion of students falls to 5.8 per cent.

Professor Jain said the Prime Minister's commitment that every student in the nation have the chance to learn an Asian language would require thousands of extra teachers. He said Hindi had come out of nowhere to be one of the four priority languages, replacing Korean, and only a very few schools around the nation taught Hindi. Mr Garrett said yesterday there were roughly 3000 Asian language teachers but could not say how many were needed to meet the goals of providing a language to every student. "That will depend on our discussions with the states," he said.

He added that "we needed to recognise" that having a teacher in a classroom was not the only way to deliver Asian languages and there were lots of opportunities to use online learning.

Future Fund chairman David Gonski, the author of the government's Gonski school funding reforms, said his review did not examine the syllabus and was solely a funding review. "The point I would make very strongly is the (Gonski) review stands as a funding review, in terms of what has been written by Dr Henry it makes a lot of sense but I am not suggesting to you that they should be linked. It is not for me to do that," he told The Australian.

The three biggest Coalition states reacted angrily to Dr Emerson's comments on school funding, with Victoria accusing the government of blackmailing them, NSW questioning how more reforms could be tied to the "mythical" Gonski funding, which has yet to be negotiated with the states, and Queensland saying the plan was "light on detail".

"We have had no engagement at all regarding the white paper and this has a profound effects on us because we run the schools and we provide the teachers," Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon said.

Additional reporting: Milanda Rout, Andrew Trounson, Imre Salusinszky and Lauren Wilson