Year three students learning Mandarin in a multilingual lesson. Credit:Brendan Esposito "We think English will be enough, that it's got us this far and it will treat us well into the future," he said. "But the world has changed rapidly. If you are a monolingual speaker these days, you are well and truly in a minority in a global context. Our education sector is still playing catch up to that." Despite millions being pumped into promoting foreign language learning in schools in the past decade, the slide has continued. Asian languages, treated as a priority by successive governments, are faring particularly badly. In 2005, 1524 NSW students took Chinese at HSC level; in 2015, when there were 12,000 more year 12 students, that number was 832. Butof most those were native Chinese speakers and only 153 were studying it as a second language. Japanese has also been in relative decline, although overall enrolments are still higher than Chinese, while the number of students taking Indonesian as a second language remains tiny.

French remains the most popular foreign language in NSW schools. But with even native speaker enrolments falling dramatically in the past decade, there is much debate about what is turning students off. "It's not for a lack of offering," said Amber Flohm, multicultural officer at the NSW Teachers Federation. "There's an oversupply of secondary language qualified teachers, and an under supply of primary ones. "I think it's a lack of focus on languages in the primary years, a lack of continuity from kindergarten into year 11 and 12, and [mandating only] 100 hours in year 7 or 8 frankly is tokenistic.

"The biggest problem is the NSW government has no overall strategic policy or plan for languages education in NSW. It's in a state of policy drift and neglect and inevitably it will decline further." Melissa Gould-Drakeley from the Modern Language Teachers Association said a problem in many government schools was the minimum class requirements (often about 15) for senior level languages. "I've got [Indonesian teacher] colleagues who are at government schools, one who had 14 students ready to go and another who had 10, but both of them were knocked back. "Last year, 70 students did Indonesian in NSW, so an extra 10 is about 12 per cent of the whole cohort. "It's been happening for years. We can't seem to get the message through. It's become this economic rationalism."

She said one answer might be more innovative approaches, such as sharing face-to-face teaching time with online offerings from distance education provider the Open High School, as many non-government schools did. Mr Mullane said recent Asia Education Foundation research suggested students decided to drop or continue foreign languages for a range of complex reasons, but there was evidence language enrolments picked up when students had a broader choice. So, if they could take five or six subjects in year 12, they were more likely to include a language. In South Australia, a change to require only four subjects for year 12 resulted in a steep decline in language enrolments. Government intervention has made a difference before: a Hawke-era national scheme that focused on Asian languages, which was continued by the Keating government, boosted language enrolments before John Howard shelved it in 2002.

But despite all the focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects of late, language learning has not been a focus of the election campaign. Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the "government is focused on practical measures to revive language teaching and learning in schools", citing programs including an app the government had created for early language learning, the development of a national languages curriculum, teacher incentives and the New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program. Labor's policy is focused particularly on Asian languages, with a target that every Australian student will have the opportunity to study an Asian language by 2025, and a $21 million scholarship plan for Australian teachers to develop Asian language skills in-country. Mr Mullane said the focus on STEM subjects had pulled focus from the importance of foreign languages. "It's interesting when you think about what it will mean to be entrepreneurial in 2016 and beyond: that's going to involve collaboration across borders and cultural groups," he said.

"So those who are going to be able to speak more than one langue are at a big advantage. That message is really not cutting through." In NSW, the Board of Studies Teaching and Educational Standards languages advisory panel is due to report to Premier Mike Baird this month on measures to boost language enrolments.