Banking on Asia

Amid Europe’s economic woes shines a light on the hill. Our hill as it happens. The region in which we live is the fastest growing market in the world1. US President Barack Obama knows that. In his historic address to the Australian Parliament the President set out a sweeping vision for the US in the Asia-Pacific century. "The Asia-Pacific is critical to achieving my highest priority and that is creating jobs and opportunity for the American people," he said.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is of the same mind. She’s commissioned a White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century. “In the Asian Century”, she said, “business as usual is not enough….there isn’t a single aspect of government policies and national planning that won’t be touched by the great changes to come. Food security and foreign investment, immigration and education, stock market structures, energy policy and environmental standards… this is a vast landscape of change”2.

State Premiers are on board too. Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu calls today’s economy the ‘great transition’ to Asia. For example, Victoria’s tourism industry anticipates a sixty-five percent increase in arrivals from Asia by 2020, forecasting that 1,065,000 tourists will spend 34.5 million nights in the state in 2020.3 Planning these visitor’s requirements, the appropriate infrastructure and delivering a world-class holiday experience will require Australians to build high levels of Asia skills and knowledge.

In a recent Australian Industry Group survey4, Australian businesses said that ‘quality partnerships, great networks and understanding of culture are extremely important’ when working with Asia. Of the 380 Australian businesses surveyed, 74% are currently working with Asia or plan to start in the near future.

How will Australians gain these vital ‘Asia skills’?

The future of Australia - and young Australians - will be dependent on our young people gaining knowledge, skills and understandings of Asia through their education – starting at school. Time is running out to achieve this. Five year olds starting school today enter the workforce in 2030, just at the time when China and India resume their position as the world’s top economic powers.

Schooling needs to produce a strong cohort of Australians fluent in an Asian language and all our young people to be equipped throughout their schooling with knowledge of Asia through History, English, Geography, Arts, Maths and Science.

The good news is that for the first time national school education policy is in place to progress Asia literacy. The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians states the need for all Australians to be Asia literate5. The new Australian Curriculum has a cross curricula priority of ‘Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia’ and a priority on Asian languages6.

A 2010 report7 on the current status of Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian and Korean languages in Australian schools shows the scale of the task. Only eighteen percent of Australian school students currently study an Asian language, decreasing to fewer than six percent by Year 12. A scant 300 students, who do not have a Chinese background, are currently studying Chinese at Year 12. Indonesian is losing 10,000 students a year. If this pattern continues there will be no students studying Indonesian at Year 12 by 2020. Japanese has declined twenty percent since 2005 and Korean is taught in very few schools8.

Cross curricula studies of Asia aren’t doing much better according to a 2009 study by the Australian Council of Educational Research into what was taught about Asia in Year 12 across a range of six senior subjects9. Typically, in NSW Modern History two percent of students chose to undertake a national project on China compared to sixty five percent on Germany and nineteen percent on Russia. The research found that only a very small proportion of senior students study any content about Asia in Year 12. Although many courses provide options for Asia studies, very few schools or students take them up due to a lack of teacher knowledge of Asia.

The Australian Curriculum’s Asia priority is unlikely to be realized without significant investment in teacher knowledge and skills at both pre service and in service levels. And Asia literacy won’t be achieved by a scattergun approach in isolated classrooms. Principals need to be engaged and equipped to lead whole school curriculum reform. A 2011 Principals Australia survey showed just seventeen percent of principals considered themselves proficient in Asia literacy skills10.

Right now Australia is in an unprecedented position to achieve Asia literacy through school education but we face a critical tipping point in June 2012 when current Federal funding for the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program funding ends. Governments have a choice: leverage the momentum and accelerate Asia literacy through continued investment, or risk inevitable decline of progress - a pattern that has occurred regularly over the past two decades.

For those five year olds starting school in Australia this year, we only have one generation left to get this right.

1. See Asialink Index www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au
2. http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/calendar/speeches
3. Tourism Forecasting Committee Forecast 2011 Issue 1; International Visitor Survey, Tourism Research Australia, year ending December 2010.
4. http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/publications
5. Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, MCEETYA, 2008 www.mceetya.edu.au
6. www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/cross_curriculum_priorities.html
7. ibid
8. Four Languages, Four Stories: Current State of Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian and Korean Languages Education in Australian Schools AEF, May 2010
9. Studies of Asia in Year 12, Wilkinson J and Milgate G, AEF, 2009 www.asiaeducation.edu.au/for_teachers/research/research_teachers.html
10. http://www.principalsaustralia.edu.au/SURVEY_MAIN