Preschools will teach a second language through play-based learning under new government trial

Updated

The Federal Government has selected 40 preschools across the country to take part in a trial of teaching a second language to young children.

Assistant Education Minister Sussan Ley said the $9.8 million program will use play-based learning to help generate interest in language studies that can be built on in later schooling.

"Our children are now 'techsperts' from early on, particularly with the vast array of interactive early education applications and games that are now available at their fingertips," Ms Ley said.

"This play-based approach is therefore a fun and easy way to get our kids interested in learning skills for life, such as a language other than English, from early on in their education journey."

The Government is looking to increase the number of school-leavers who can speak a second language.

"The proportion of Year 12 students studying a language other than English has dropped from about 40 per cent in the 1960s to about 12 per cent today," Ms Ley said.

"We also hope it will give our kids an early insight into other cultures and help promote inclusive communities, given almost one in five Australians speak a language other than English at home."

The schools were selected from more than 1,000 applicants who applied to take part in the trial.

Ms Ley said the strong applicant pool ensured a diverse representation of preschools involving every state and territory.

There will be 12 trial sites in NSW, nine in Victoria, eight in Queensland, five in WA, three in SA, and one each in Tasmania, the NT and the ACT.

This includes a mix of metropolitan, regional and remote trial sites across various preschool models, including government-run, stand-alone community-based and long day care.

Each preschool will trial one of five languages - Mandarin, Japanese, Indonesian, Arabic or French - with the final language allocation to be confirmed before trials start next year.

Queensland Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek has welcomed the trial and said there would be no extra cost involved for the states.

"This is a Federal Government initiative that's been announced in their budget and we're happy to support it," he said.

"I'm particularly pleased to see it's in regional areas like Rockhampton, Townsville and Mt Isa as well as the inner-city area such as Inala, West End and Kenmore."

Topics: education, preschool, federal-government, languages, nsw, vic, qld, wa, sa, tas, nt, act

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