Seoul: Public school students will be able to study Korean or Japanese for the Higher School Certificate through a "virtual classroom", overcoming a teacher shortage in regional areas.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian spoke to students at Chatswood Public School from Seoul on Thursday, as she joined a class of year three students who sang songs for their Sydney counterparts via an online video link.
The Chatswood students study Korean every day, and have been exchanging emails with the Seoul National University Elementary School students.
"I'm so proud of your Korean," said Ms Berejiklian, who is also their local MP.
Ms Berejiklian said 45,000 students in NSW learn Japanese or Korean but the study of Asian languages for the HSC has plummeted in recent years.
Although some inner city primary schools are offering innovative programs using digital technology, and a second language is mandatory in the first two years of high school, data shows just 8 per cent of students studied a language for HSC.
The "virtual high school" Aurora College will offer HSC level Japanese and Korean from next term, delivered online, for schools without a language program.
"If you are a child in a remote part of NSW and [you] may not have been able to participate in a class where there are other children learning those languages, you can now do that through the virtual school... The tyranny of distance is no longer there when it comes to learning another language," said Ms Berejiklian.
Consulting firm PWC warned in a submission to the Turnbull government's foreign policy white paper this year that Asian language skills in Australia are low and falling. In 2014, only 2.2 per cent of HSC students took Japanese, and this fell to just 1.8 per cent last year, the report said.
Only 1.2 per cent study Chinese, the second most popular Asian language.
Even fewer study Korean. In 2016, only 78 HSC students studied Korean,of which 58 were background speakers.
In the same year, 1521 students studied Japanese in the HSC, including 671 beginners and 22 background speakers.
PWC said state governments needed to invest more in Asian language teaching because it was a "critical step towards ensuring future generations are Asia literate".
Ms Berejiklian said "learning a second language is absolutely essential".
'It is not only strengthening opportunities for those children in terms of job prospects, it is broadening their horizons in terms of those cultural links," she said.
After talking to the Korean students in Seoul, she said: "Isn't it amazing to be able to learn a language from people your own age, on the other side of the world?"
