Senior Secondary Languages Education Research Project: Final report

This report is part of the Australian Government’s efforts to revive the teaching of languages to ensure that at least 40 per cent of Year 12 students study a language in addition to English within a decade. Its purpose is to inform all Australian governments on practical, implementable ways to enable this. 

Recommendations from this research draw on: analysis of a policy and literature review; student, parent and principal surveys; publicly available Year 12 student data; a case study on Japanese language in the senior secondary years; and consultations with government and non-government education sectors, national education agencies, teacher and school leader professional associations, languages experts and complementary providers.

Languages education in Australian schools is currently in a period of transition with a renewed focus on languages by many Education Ministers and the introduction of the Australian Curriculum. In 2014, not all states/territories have a specific policy for languages. Curriculum policies focus on the mid-primary to junior secondary years and vary across jurisdictions from encouraging schools to offer language programmes to requiring them to do so at particular year levels. In all cases, language learning is not mandatory beyond junior secondary level. Substantial work on strengthening the quality and provision of languages education is underway in jurisdictions and sectors. That makes it timely for national collaborative action to support languages while allowing for local priorities and strategies.