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From next year, four New South Wales primary schools will take part in the State's new Bilingual Schools Program. Across a range of subject areas classes will be conducted in Mandarin, Korean, Japanese or Indonesian. The program will be offered as an option alongside the traditional curriculum. The initiative has been prompted by the need to increase the number of students achieving fluency in priority Asian languages. It reflects Asia's importance to Australia's future economic and social prosperity and is also a response to the increasing number of parents wanting to send their children to a primary school offering a strong Asian language program.