A re-elected Albanese Labor Government will invest $25 million to support 600 community schools across Australia that help more than 90,000 students learn 84 languages.

Australia is one of the most diverse countries in the world – half of Australians were either born overseas or have at least one parent who was.

Community Language Schools strengthen our social inclusion by supporting young Australians – primarily from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds – to learn or maintain a language other than English. 

This program connects students to the languages of their parents, grandparents and broader communities.

We will dedicate $5 million of this funding to a specialist Asian languages funding stream to help more students, regardless of their background, become fluent in Asian languages through to Years 11 and 12.

This will open further employment opportunities and career paths for students, and grow economic ties with our friends and neighbours across our region.

Having more Australians capable of speaking the languages of our largest trading partners and neighbours is a huge benefit to our nation.

Peter Dutton can’t be trusted to keep these important community schools open.

Under the Liberals, Community Language Schools ran on the smell of an oily rag - with volunteers giving hours of their time and scraping together money to pay bills and supply textbooks for students.

Only Labor has a plan to build Australia’s future.