Dearth of Indian-language classes at New Zealand schools

* A quote from Education Ministry spokesperson Hayley Welch has been removed from this article after the ministry corrected its position on data collection.

Community leaders and educators are calling for greater recognition of Indian languages in New Zealand's public schools.

While the Indian population had leapfrogged the Chinese community to become the country's third-largest ethnic group, languages such as Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati remained largely absent from the public education sector, they said.

The 2023 Census recorded 292,092 people who claimed Indian heritage, a 22 percent increase since 2018.

According to Stats NZ, Hindi was now the country's fourth most spoken language, while Punjabi ranked ninth.

Punjabi also recorded the fastest growth between 2018 and 2023 - an increase of 45.1 percent, Stats NZ said.

Despite the growth of the Indian population and rising interest in Asian-language options at public schools, community leaders said opportunities to study Indian languages remained scarce.

Rohit Kumar, editor of Hindi literary magazine Bharat-Darshan, said many in the Indian community wanted to preserve and learn heritage languages such as Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati.

However, Indian languages were not consistently offered in public schools and remained far less integrated into many curriculums compared to Māori, Spanish, French, Japanese or Chinese, Kumar said.

He said community-run language schools remained the primary places where Indian heritage languages were taught.

"These schools often operate on weekends or after hours, run by volunteers, cultural organisations or faith-based groups," Kumar said.

"They play a vital role in keeping the languages alive, though access and quality can vary depending on location and resources."

Kumar wanted schools to possess structured curricula and standardized teaching resources that would allow young people and bilingual learners to study Indian languages.

He said community programs also needed sustained support through funding, teacher training and partnerships with the Ministry of Education.

Narendra Bhana, former president of the New Zealand Indian Central Association, said a community language school had been running for about 80 years at the Auckland Indian Association's Mahatma Gandhi Centre, offering students opportunities to learn Gujarati and Hindi.

"The demand is definitely there," Bhana said. "At the moment, we have nearly 100 kids coming to learn languages and culture every Sunday."

However, the school relied entirely on volunteer teachers and received little financial support, Bhana said, noting that this created barriers around teacher availability and limited the supply of teaching materials.

Bhana wanted Indian languages - at least Hindi - to be incorporated into the education system.

"New Zealand is now a multicultural society, especially Auckland," he said. "We need language options for these children."

Navtej Randhawa, a fourth-generation Indian New Zealander from Punjab and a former National Party candidate for Panmure-Ōtāhuhu, called for Indian heritage languages to be taught in public schools.

"At present, community-led initiatives are the backbone of heritage language education," Randhawa said. "These spaces are vital, but they are limited in reach and capacity."

Randhawa said responsibility for preserving Indian languages had largely fallen to volunteer-run community schools instead of being embedded in mainstream education.

"There is no systemic provision by the Ministry of Education for Indian heritage languages, despite the Indian diaspora being one of the oldest and fastest growing in New Zealand, with a history stretching back 135 years," he said.

"Without structured support, children are left reliant on informal and under-resourced community efforts. We need meaningful investment and recognition."

He said political and community lobbying was key to ensuring Indian languages - and the history of the Indian diaspora - were given their rightful place in New Zealand's multicultural education system.

Auckland's Papatoetoe North School currently offers two bilingual Hindi classes for Year 3 to Year 6 students.

Principal Stan Tiatia said the availability of heritage-language options reflected community demographics.

"The student population is about 50 percent Pasifika, 30 percent Indian or Fijian Indian, and 20 percent Māori," Tiatia said.

"The school needs to reflect the community, rather than the other way around. The value of Hindi needs to be developed, given the rise in population of speakers."

Tiatia said the value of providing Hindi and other heritage languages in public schools had been a positive learning experience for students, helping them see how heritage-language learning could also support English acquisition.

However, he said the school lacked a structured curriculum for Hindi.

"There's no support, no resources available for Hindi bilingual education," he said. "So, we've had the access directly from India or try to access what we can locally."

Vaughan Couillault, principal of Papatoetoe High School, said the school started offering Hindi classes in response to strong demand from the community more than a decade ago.

"I've got a significant Indo-Fijian population at my school," he said. "There was a demand for it."

However, he said Hindi was only offered to junior students up to Year 10, as it was not an NCEA subject.

"When students get into Years 11, 12 or 13, they're focused on getting the qualifications," he said. "Learning Hindi won't let them do that, because there's no curriculum structure in New Zealand for it.

"We could offer it perhaps in Year 11 or Year 12, but students won't take it because it doesn't provide them with a qualification. It actually puts them at a disadvantage from a qualification point of view."

Couillault said offering Hindi-language classes to meet community needs had made a real difference, proving valuable for students to earn qualifications in what was, for many, their second language.

He said many schools would have trouble finding room in their curriculums to include additional languages.

"We haven't got that infrastructure in place at the moment," he said. "But that's the thing about a curriculum - it always has the opportunity to evolve over time."

Latest Education Ministry data on secondary school language enrollment showed Japanese remained the most popular Asian language in 2024, with 12,257 students enrolled.

Chinese ranked second, with 5415 students, while interest in Korean had continued to grow, doubling since 2017 to reach 166 students in 2024.

However, no Indian languages were specifically listed as subjects or NCEA subjects alongside Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

Juliet Kennedy, president of the New Zealand Association of Language Teachers, a nonprofit organisation that advocates for language education, said the group supported the inclusion of Indian languages in school curriculums but noted that several layers of bureaucracy would need to be overcome for this to happen.

Kennedy said debate persisted over which Indian languages should be prioritised given the number of options.

"Obviously Hindi would be one," she said. "But Punjabi and Gujarati are also widely spoken, so I think they should be included as well."

Kennedy said schools nationwide needed to create pathways to include all heritage and community languages in their curriculums.

Hayley Welch, acting general manager of Te Poutāhū Curriculum Centre at the Education Ministry, said learning a second language was not compulsory in New Zealand schools but the New Zealand Curriculum included a specific component that focused on learning languages.

"There is no requirement for schools to offer a second language," Welch said. "But all schools with students in Year 7 to Year 10 should be working towards offering students opportunities for learning a second or subsequent language."

Welch said schools made their own decisions about teaching programs.

"Schools usually select languages that suit the interests, resources and needs of the school and community," she said.

Welch said a draft of the refreshed New Zealand Curriculum, including an updated learning languages component, was expected to be available for use and feedback from the fourth term this year, with implementation in all schools planned from 2027.

"The ministry remains committed to reflecting New Zealand's diversity in education," Welch said.

"We are interested in how the national curriculum might support broader language inclusion in the future, and we welcome ongoing engagement with communities on issues like this."