Everyone loves to talk about the climate crisis. But talking alone isn’t going to stop the glaciers from melting. Or the rain-forests from disappearing. And each time adults just talk and don’t act, it’s up to us, the children, to take matters into our own hands. Quite literally. Plant-for-the-Planet is an organisation where kids all over the world plant trees as a sign of climate justice.

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It would seem not according to parents and business.

The Australian this week posted a story with comments from the head of the accounting body, CPA Australia, saying that only “Only 300 students who do not have a Chinese background are studying Chinese in Year 12 and only 18 per cent of all school students study an Asian language”.

The story raises issues that are not new in Australia. Do we continue to teach langauges that are not of our major trading partners or do we embrace these Asian langauges?

In Queensland at least the answer is, “we can’t attract enough teachers of these langauges” according to Education Queensland and “therefore we’ll have to teach German because we have plenty of those teachers.”

Lets come up with a solution. Australia’s economic focus is no longer Europe, the current economic climate means it wont be for years to come. Asia is feeding us and to empower our children with the skills to work in this part of the world we need to skill them accordingly.

Lets get business, parents and our Asian community leaders together and lets build the capacity within to teach these needed skills.

According to Report exposed by The Australian today, Australia’s state schools continue to cater for the more underpriviledged than their Private school partners.

The report which can be found here says that the funding mix for Australian schools is being skewed by the Federal Governments current funding arrangements.

The report makes interesting reading. It will be hopeful that the Gonski report which is in the hands of the Federal Government will have taken this into account and that schools who need greater levels of funding to support their communities can somehow be provided with the resources they need to become more positive focuses for their communities.

Listen here to an interview from ABC Radio