Federal Arts Minister Peter Garrett has announced a plan to rescue over 100 threatened Indigenous languages across Australia.

The Government will invest $9 million over the next year towards the project, which includes funding for interpretive and translation services.

A 2005 study titled The National Indigenous Languages Survey found 110 Indigenous languages still spoken in Australia were at risk of disappearing.

Mr Garrett says the funding and national focus will improve coordination between all parties working to reduce the loss of languages.

"We will firstly make sure that we have a feasibility study for the national Indigenous language centre," he said.

"Additionally ... we are going to move forward with the commitment to invest in critically endangered languages, some 65 projects with early childhood tests and mobile childhood teams."

He says the funding recognises that Indigenous languages play an important role in student learning, particularly in bilingual schools.

"We are especially keen that relevant jurisdictions are encouraged to provide the opportunity for Indigenous language support, for those Indigenous language programs that are already in place to continue," he said.

But he will not weigh into the debate over the future of bilingual education in the Northern Territory.

"I am not going to jump into a debate about that particular question right now," he said.

"Jurisdictions have got their own flexibility under the National Education Agreement for languages to determine how funding is allocated."

Indigenous education

Meanwhile, new research has found the performance of Indigenous students could be significantly improved by ensuring all teachers, teaching assistants and principals receive thorough inter-cultural training.

The training being suggested aims to ensure all parties understand and respect the differences between cultures.

Associate Professor Lyn Fasoli, from the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, led the four-year collaborative study.

"Nearly 40 per cent of our kids are Indigenous and many of them are in those remote communities, yet we have a fairly mainstream leadership approach," she said.

"We basically said a different form of leadership is needed to address the cultural differences and and the cultural contexts of these remote Indigenous schools."

Professor Fasoli says the inter-cultural training should be extended to more schools.

"We have had 30 years of pretty concerted attempts to improve Indigenous outcomes, close the gap - which is the current rhetoric - and the gap is not closing," she said.

"We continue to have a great disparity between Indigenous kids' outcomes and mainstream kids, or kids in urban centres."