Benefits of diversity

Table B1: Number of children and students being funded to learn languages in Community Language Schools (CLS), 2022 to 2024
YearNumber of funded CLSNumber of languages being learnedTotal children or students
20241824741,528
20231764840,712
20221785237,240


Table B2: Top 20 government-funded languages being learned in Victorian CLS in 202415
LanguageNumber of children or students funded
Chinese (Mandarin)16,748
Arabic4,202
Greek4,119
Vietnamese3,779
Tamil1,731
Sinhala951
Japanese904
Bangla736
Dari672
Punjabi665
Assyrian599
Korean525
Russian492
Cantonese467
Somali455
Urdu436
Nepali403
Persian381
Serbian359
Shona Ndebele265


Table B3: Students enrolled in VCE language studies (unit 4, top 20) in Victorian schools in 202416
LanguageNumber of enrolments
Chinese1,669
French1,497
Japanese1,128
Italian546
Vietnamese464
German376
Indonesian328
Latin257
Greek181
Spanish134
Arabic107
Persian102
Hindi74
Punjabi74
Turkish69
Tamil46
Korean44
Khmer39
Hebrew36
Sinhala35

Footnotes

15Chinese comprises Chinese First Language, Chinese Second Language, Chinese Second Language Advanced and Chinese Language, Culture and Society; Japanese comprises Japanese First Language and Japanese Second Language; Indonesian comprises Indonesian First Language and Indonesian Second Language; Korean comprises Korean First Language and Korean Second Language; Vietnamese comprises Vietnamese First Language and Vietnamese Second Language. Overseas schools and interstate schools are excluded.

16Source: Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2023 Satisfactory completion of VCE Units. Enrolments in VCE language studies (Unit 4) in Victorian schools in 2023.

Updated