Australia Provides Millions for Learning Chinese

 

learn chinese in australia

In late 2012, Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, introduced a major foreign policy white paper titled, Australia in the Asian Century.

One group of programs focuses on developing the capabilities of Australia’s students and future workforce so that they will be prepared to take advantage of economic growth throughout the Asian region. In Ms. Gillard’s own words, "Children in kindergarten now will graduate from high school with a sound working knowledge of Asia.” This entails both historical and cultural knowledge, but perhaps more importantly, significant changes to the foreign language curriculum to promote Mandarin, Japanese, Hindi and Indonesian. To this end, all Australian schools will develop partnerships with schools elsewhere in Asia. Additionally, at least one of these languages will be available in every school until year 10. The program also takes into account the large number of Australians with a family background in Asian countries and has created three “learning pathways” for different types of language students: second language, background language, and first language.

The real commitment: In order to help students achieve advanced proficiency in these languages through study abroad and other programs, the Australian government has announced new resources in the form of grants and loans. The AsiaBound Grants Program provides financial assistance to 3600 young Australians each year in the form of $2000 or $5000 grants for studying in Asia. And starting in 2014, loans for study in Asia from OS-HELP will increase from $1,250 to $7,500.

With the Australia in the Asian Century initiative, Ms. Gillard’s government is clearly setting an ambitious path for integrating Australia more deeply with China and other nations of the region. These types of financial and educational programs demonstrate the importance of China and Chinese language to Australia, as well as to many other countries.

These days it is more convenient than ever before to learn Chinese and the professional incentive to do so is unprecedented. Last year Mandarin House received students from over 70 nationalities who recognized this. Read more about our intensive Chinese programs or contact us and one of our consultants will help you to put together a plan for advancing your Chinese.

 

 

 

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