Asian language 'vital for syllabus'

ASIAN languages should be compulsory for every school student, says the accounting body CPA Australia.

ASIAN languages should be compulsory for every school student because many will go on to work in Asia's fast-growing economies, says the accounting body CPA Australia.

"Only 300 students who do not have a Chinese background are studying Chinese in Year 12 and only 18 per cent of all school students study an Asian language," said CPA chief executive Alex Malley.

Mr Malley, who has more than 25 per cent of his accountant members working in Asia, said his organisation would lobby not only on tax and super but also on language and culture in the lead-up to this year's federal budget.

He said talk of capitalising on the Asian century amounted to little without education funding to ensure young Australians could speak an Asian tongue and hold their own in a polyglot region.

"We have to make a decision now whether we're going to continue to be a leader in the Asian sector or a producer of labour. I think it's that desperate," he said.

"If (school children) are going to have global opportunities, then they need a few things in their kitbag and one of those is a capacity to speak another language in the Asian sector where most of them will be doing business.

"It does come down to respect of cultures and respect of communication abilities."

He said CPA spoke as an organisation with a history in Asia dating back to the Colombo Plan days. It had long-established offices in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Signapore; had gone into China two decades ago; and recently set up in Vietnam and Indonesia.

 As a child of migrant stock and former university lecturer, Mr Malley said compulsory language learning need not be a turn-off if it was taught and marketed well.

He said it was better to make Asian languages "part of the fabric" from the outset of school than for students to grow up at a disadvantage in an economic region where Asian students were mastering English and other languages.

But Melbourne University's Joe Lo Bianco, an expert in language education, said "big bazooka" ideas such as the CPA's were a simplistic distraction from the steady work needed to make a success of the new national school curriculum with its emphasis on languages.

"We have to build up patiently the (supply of) teachers and quality programs," Professor Lo Bianco said.

"There are many reasons to do languages, not just commercial ones, and there are many languages other than Asian languages . . . What are we going to say about a global language like Spanish -- that we're not interested?"

Professor Lo Bianco agreed there was a gulf between the ambitions of the national curriculum and the state of schools today.

He said this could be bridged with patient and steady efforts but the CPA proposal was quite unrealistic.

"You couldn't staff compulsory Asian language teaching for a long-time, there just aren't enough teachers,'' he said.

He said every few years someone declare a language crisis and offered a big, simple solution.

In each case, schools scrambled to put this into practice. "What you get is a proliferation of very poor quality programs that then brings the whole enterprise into disrepute,'' Professor Lo Bianco said.

By contrast, a modest number of quality programs would help win over parents, who often underestimated the commitment demanded by language learning.