South Asian languages are the largest group in NSW schools and most have no HSC course

In 2025, students from Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language backgrounds became the largest language group in New South Wales government schools. There are 75,187 of them, 24.1 per cent of all students from a language background other than English. Ten years ago the share was 15.9 per cent.

Urdu is spoken in the homes of 10,043 of them. Bengali in 8,196. Telugu in 4,895. Malayalam in 4,073.

Not one of those four can be studied for the Higher School Certificate. There is no course. There is no examination. There is no pathway at all.

What the numbers actually say

The figures come from the NSW Department of Education’s own annual language diversity report, published by its Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation.

In 2025, 312,242 students in NSW government schools, 40.0 per cent of the total, came from a language background other than English. Hindi is the largest single Indo-European language among them, with 15,464 students, or 5.0 per cent of that cohort.

A definition matters here, because it is routinely misread. Language background other than English means a language other than English is spoken by the student or by at least one parent or carer at home. It is recorded at enrolment. The department is careful to note that not all such students are learners of English as an additional language, because many are already fluent.

So 15,464 is not a count of children who speak Hindi rather than English. It is a count of households where Hindi is present.

The comparison that is usually made, and why it is wrong

A figure has been circulating that sets 15,464 Hindi-background students against the 29 students who sat Hindi Continuers for the 2025 HSC.

That comparison does not hold, and this masthead is not going to make it. The 15,464 covers Kindergarten to Year 12 across thirteen year groups in government schools only. The 29 covers a single Year 12 cohort across government, Catholic, independent and overseas candidates. Comparing them overstates the gap by roughly an order of magnitude.

The real story does not need the exaggeration.

What is actually offered, and what is not

For the 2025 HSC, the community language courses available to South Asian language speakers were Hindi Continuers, with 29 candidates, Punjabi Continuers with 30, and Tamil Continuers with 65.

That is the entire list. Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam, Nepali and Sinhala do not appear in the course enrolment table because no course exists.

Set against other communities, the difference in provision is stark. Chinese has four separate HSC courses. Chinese Continuers alone had 334 candidates in 2025, Chinese and Literature 309, Chinese in Context 110 and Chinese Beginners 57. Korean has four courses, and Korean Continuers grew from 16 candidates in 2020 to 84 in 2025, with a further 110 in Korean Beginners. Japanese Continuers had 796. Arabic Continuers had 233 plus 53 in Arabic Extension. Vietnamese Continuers had 218.

The pattern is not that South Asian language candidature is low. It is that for most South Asian languages there is nothing to enrol in.

Hindi is close to the line at which courses are cancelled

Where a course does exist, its survival depends on a number that Hindi has repeatedly been near.

Hindi Continuers candidature ran 12 in 2020, 23 in 2021, 32 in 2022, 29 in 2023, 18 in 2024 and 29 in 2025. At those numbers a single school’s cohort moves the figure, and no trend can be read from it.

The threshold matters because of how the Education Standards Authority handles small courses. In an official notice in June 2025 concerning Croatian Continuers, the authority confirmed the course would continue because enrolments exceeded fifteen students in 2024, and added that if future enrolments fall below fifteen students it will provide stakeholders with further information about potential discontinuation. Decisions of this kind involve a national reference group operating under the collaborative framework for languages.

Hindi sat at 12 in 2020 and 18 in 2024. Twice in six years it has been at or near the level that triggers a discontinuation conversation, in the language of the largest single Indo-European community in the state’s schools.

[Unverified] The exact current status of any review of Hindi Continuers could not be established, and the fifteen student threshold is described here from a single official notice about a different language. Both should be confirmed with the authority before any campaign is built on them.

The money that arrived in August

On 21 August 2026, the federal government announced grants covering eight Indian languages under the Fluency in Asian Languages stream of the Community Language Schools Grants Program.

The eight are Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The grants run for four years. Named recipients include the NSW Federation of Tamil Schools, the Tamil Study Centre at Homebush, the University of Sydney, the Australian National University and Community Languages Victoria.

The wider program is described as a $25.6 million investment over four years from 2025-26, supporting community language schools that promote more than 80 languages to more than 90,000 students.

Dr Anne Aly, the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, framed the purpose: “Language connects young people to their family, culture and community, and it also opens doors to study, employment and opportunity.” She added that “Australia’s linguistic diversity is one of our greatest strengths”.

Julian Hill, the Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs, described community language schools as helping young Australians stay connected to their heritage, strengthen intergenerational ties and celebrate cultural identity.

[Unverified] The dollar value attached to this particular announcement was not stated in the coverage, and the ministerial release could not be retrieved to confirm it. The $25.6 million figure is the program total across all languages, not the amount going to these eight.

Two things are worth noticing about the announcement. It funds community language schools, which teach outside school hours, rather than creating HSC courses. Bengali, Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam and Urdu now receive federal support for community teaching while having no path to a Higher School Certificate credential in New South Wales.

Why this matters more each year

The new arrivals data shows the direction of travel.

In 2024, 8,042 students arrived new to NSW government schools, speaking 139 languages between them. The largest single language group was Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, at 1,633 students, or 20.3 per cent. That is ahead of Chinese languages at 1,406 and Arabic at 1,025.

Within it: Hindi 271, Urdu 261, Tamil 198, Malayalam 142, Nepali 142, Sinhalese 124, Telugu 118 and Bengali 105.

So the group whose languages are least served by the credential system is the group arriving fastest.

The questions worth putting

For families, the practical point is narrow but real. If your language is Hindi, Punjabi or Tamil, an HSC course exists and enrolling in it is what keeps it existing. Small candidature is the mechanism by which these courses disappear.

For the department and the authority, three questions follow from the data, and this masthead has put them.

What is the enrolment threshold at which a community language course is reviewed for discontinuation, and is Hindi Continuers currently under review.

What would it take to establish an HSC course in Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Telugu or Malayalam, given that all five now have federal funding for community teaching and four of them have more than four thousand background speakers in NSW government schools.

And what is the department’s assessment of why the largest language group in the state’s schools has three courses while a smaller group has four courses in one language.

[Unverified] No teacher, community language school principal, departmental spokesperson, academic or parent could be found on the public record about any of this. That absence is unusual for a subject affecting seventy-five thousand children, and filling it is the next step for this story.

Sources

Every date, figure and quotation in this article is drawn from the sources below. They are listed so you can check the record yourself.

• NSW Department of Education, Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, "Language diversity in NSW Government schools, 2025"
• NSW Education Standards Authority, "HSC course enrolments"
• NSW Education Standards Authority, "Historical HSC course enrolments"
• NSW Education Standards Authority, "Official notice, continuation of Croatian Continuers"
• Indian Link, "Indian language education expands in Australia"
• NSW Education Standards Authority, "Hindi Continuers syllabus and examination materials"
• NSW Department of Education, "Community Languages Schools Program"