From ‘yiasas’ to ‘ni hao’ more than 5000 little Victorians will start learning a new language at kinder in 2019.
As part of a state government initiative 150 kindergartens will offer weekly sessions in one of 15 languages.
And another 10 have been selected to run a bilingual program, where up to half of the kinder program would be offered in another language.
Kindergartens across Victoria will run weekly sessions in a range of languages including Mandarin, Arabic, Punjabi, Italian, Japanese, French, Greek, Hebrew and Spanish.
This program is expected to reach more than 5,000 children across 160 kindergartens – a third of which are located in regional Victoria.
Among these are 29 kindergartens which will offer Aboriginal languages and 27 that will offer Auslan.
The $17.9 million Early Childhood Language Program will provide additional staff to teach children a new language in partnership with existing staff – at no cost to parents or early childhood services.
Learning languages at a young age is shown to have benefits such as increased reading and writing skills, cognitive flexibility, strengthened brain development and improved problem-solving skills.
“We know that learning another language has great rewards – it’s fun, it improves brain function and actually helps kids learn English better,” Minister for Early Childhood Education Jenny Mikakos said.
“This Australian-first initiative is going to put little Victorians at the front of the pack and ready for school.”
