Officials in Australia hope that the number of students that study classical Greek as a subject in school will increase once the language is offered in the primary and high school curriculum.
The curriculum authority is working hard on including languages such as Hindi, Turkish, classical Greek, Latin and the Australian Sign Language (Auslan) into the annual school schedules.
However, Labor Senator Sue Lines is worried that this might not be the best use of taxpayer funds, given that only 42 Year 12 students in Australia are currently learning classical Greek, and they’re all located in Victoria and New South Wales.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority was asked by the state and territory education ministers to form a curriculum for the five languages in 2012 and they have reconfirmed their decision in 2014. “I don’t recall someone saying at the time `No, we don’t want it’,” said chief executive Rob Randall to a Senate committee hearing on Thursday, June 4.
“Making the curriculum available means … it does make things more likely that people are going to do it.” He believes that if students are given the chance to learn classical Greek at the lower school levels –primary and the beginning of high school – then more students will wish to continue their classical Greek language education later on in life.
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