Schools teaching 'prestige' languages over those most spoken, professor says
When 10-year-old Guribadat Kaur started kindergarten in regional Victoria her parents changed her Punjabi name to Ebu because no-one could pronounce her name.
Ebu's mother Raman Preet Kaur said her daughter was "lost" before the change.
"It was hard — she didn't know if people were talking to her, so we had to change her name to something easy to pronounce," she said.
Ms Kaur said if Punjabi had been available to learn at her daughter's Ballarat school, Ebu might have felt more accepted and children and teachers might have been able to pronounce her name.
In 2025, things started to change for Ebu when she attended the volunteer-run Rootz Punjabi language program outside of school hours.
"[Her] sense of identity grows more strong,"
Ms Kaur said.
According to the latest census in 2021, Punjabi is the fastest-growing community in Australia, with about 240,000 people using the language at home.
In Victoria, Punjabi is the fourth most commonly spoken language, excluding English.
However, it is only taught in two Victorian government schools.
Raman Kaur and her daughter, Guribadat Kaur, attending Punjabi school.
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'Prestige languages'
University of Melbourne professor of language Joseph Lo Bianco said languages were chosen for schools based on utility, but also "prestige".
"I think it is sad that there is a hierarchy of values that many people have in their heads about what language is worthwhile," Professor Lo Bianco said.
Professor Lo Bianco thinks schools should consider what languages students speak at home.
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"The main Asian languages are seen to have economic benefits, such as Japanese and Chinese.
"People admire French culture, so there's a lot of prestige attached to that."
French is one of the top five most-taught languages in Victorian state schools and is offered at many private schools in Melbourne such as Haileybury, Caulfield Grammar, Wesley College and Carey Baptist Grammar.
However, there are only 18,543 French speakers in Victoria, which is equivalent to 0.29 per cent of the state's population.
Most commonly taught languages in Victorian government schools
Most commonly spoken languages in Victoria, excluding English
1. Mandarin
1. Mandarin
2. Auslan
2. Vietnamese
3. Japanese
3. Greek
4. Italian
4. Punjabi
5. French
5. Italian
6. Indonesian
6. Arabic
7. Spanish
7. Cantonese
8. German
8. Hindi
9. Victorian Indigenous Languages
9. Sinhalese
10. Hindi
10. Spanish
"I think there is a case for doing more in Arabic and Turkish and Vietnamese and languages like that," Professor Lo Bianco said.
He said changing and diversifying the languages taught in schools was difficult because some people did not value some cultures as much as others.
"So we can only do it by steadily promoting the value of cultural differences,"
Professor Lo Bianco said.
Fastest-growing community
In 2018, when Ramman Marupur moved to Ballarat, Punjabi was fast becoming one of the most spoken languages in the regional Victorian city.
The following year, the first-generation Indian-Australian launched a free school to teach Punjabi language, traditional dance and religion to help students develop a sense of pride about their Indian heritage.
Preet Khinda and Ramman Marupur said learning your mother language is important for cultural pride.
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ABC Ballarat: Charlotte Wilkes
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The Rootz Punjabi School in Ballarat, which has recently expanded to another site in Geelong, has 20 students.
Ms Marupur said the school helped students overcome cultural put-downs, like being teased for wearing "Indian costumes".
Punjabi is now the second-most spoken language in Ballarat, excluding English.
The teacher at Rootz Punjabi School in Geelong, Preet Khinda, said educating students with an Indian background about their language and culture was important, but it needed to be mirrored by acceptance in the wider community.
"Our kids feel awkward when they speak our language in a shopping centre," Ms Khinda said.
"I think people should accept all those things, like cultural identity.
"
I think schools should teach all the young children that we should respect each and every culture's language.
"
Growing up bi-cultural
As "one of two Vietnamese students" in her school, Haylee Hua said she grappled with her sense of identity.
"People ask you, 'What culture are you from?' or, 'What are you?'" the 20-year-old Monash University student said.
"They'll assume that you're Chinese."
She said if Vietnamese had been taught more widely, it would have made life easier for her, and other descendants of Vietnamese migrants.
"Having an Aussie being able to speak a few words of Vietnamese would really help," Ms Hua said.
She attended an out-of-school Victorian School of Languages (VSL) course every Saturday to improve her understanding of Vietnamese outside of her own home.
Ms Hua says seeing Vietnamese taught at school would have been encouraging for her younger self.
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Supplied: Haylee Hua
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Today, Vietnamese is the second-most spoken language at home in Victoria, excluding English.
Worse in the regions
Professor Lo Bianco said Vietnamese was a good example of a language that needed to be more widely taught in mainstream schools to better reflect the real world.
"In communities where there are a lot of Vietnamese children and families it's mostly neglected," he said.
The Punjabi Rootz School is run by volunteers in Ballarat and Geelong.
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ABC Ballarat: Charlotte Wilkes
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While the Department of Education offers classes in more than 50 languages outside school hours through the VSL, Professor Lo Bianco said regional and remote communities were still "disadvantaged" when it came to language offerings.
Professor Lo Bianco said that for migrant communities in regional areas, having diverse language offerings in schools was a "form of respect" and provided migrants with a sense of belonging.
"[It's] a way of saying that they count,"
he said.
"Schools should know more about who their students are and what languages they have in their homes and their communities.
"If they can't teach those languages, they should celebrate the fact that the students know them."
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