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Australia in the Asian century

By Juwai, 29 October 2012

Australia is determined to take advantage of the Asian boom, and some of the first steps are happening in classrooms.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has made a commitment to spend an increased amount of time on students. She aims to make learning another Asian language a priority by focusing more classroom time to do so.

She announced that students would all be provided with acess to learn any of these languages: Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian, and Japanese. She also plans for all schools to create relationships with other schools in Asia to encourage and support language teaching.

The plan is split into five key factors: education and skills, the economy, regional skill, commerce, and culture.

Read more from this story on ABC News.