Preschool children have a chance to begin learning a foreign language before they start school under an expanded Early Learning Languages Australia (ELLA) program.
The Australian Government has announced that $5.9 million will be provided to make the ELLA program nationally available to all preschools from 2017.
ELLA is a series of interactive applications used on a digital device, aimed at making learning a language engaging and interesting for children in preschool. The languages that are currently available are: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Indonesian, Japanese and Spanish. In 2018, Modern Greek and Hindi will be added to the list of languages available.
Preschools interested in participating in the ELLA program will need to meet eligibility criteria before applying which includes:
- services must offer a preschool program to children in the year before schooling
- the preschool educator must be a degree qualified ECT
- have internet/WI FI connection
For more information on the ELLA Program and Applying: Early Learning Languages Australia
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