TASMANIA'S education system will only successfully produce bilingual students if parents believe that the study of foreign languages is a good idea, says an education chief.
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Tasmanian Principals Association president David Raw said Tasmania's commitment to language studies would be a long-term, and uncertain project.
"Acceptance in the community and the willingness of governments to provide sufficient resources, to shift practice, is needed," Mr Raw said.
"It is easy to acknowledge that, but to do something about it is a completely different thing."
Community perceptions surrounding foreign language studies is one in a range of impediments preventing Tasmanian students from speaking a second language.
Education Department deputy secretary Liz Banks said other issues included teacher availability and continuity of study from primary to secondary school.
Umi Quor, a foreign language teacher for more than 20 years, said a commitment from schools was also needed.
The federal government's white paper, released last week, said that every child in Australia should be given the opportunity to learn either Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese or Hindi.
The aim is to improve Australia's Asian connections, with a CPA Australia report finding that Australians were detached from Asia, and did not consider Asian markets.
Australian Parents Council executive director Ian Dalton said a survey conducted six years ago found that some parents wanted their children to learn an Asian language, but had expressed concerns over its delivery.
"We find a lot of dissatisfaction amongst parents whose child will go through primary school, get to the end of year 6 and might not be able to put a comprehensible sentence together," Mr Dalton said.
"A school might also teach a language for two or three years, lose that teacher, and then there is no one else to teach it."
A student's ability to continue language study was also a parental concern, one confirmed by education department figures that show almost half of Tasmanian students who study Indonesian, Japanese and Chinese in primary school, will not continue study as a secondary student.
Currently 7415 Tasmanian primary school students are studying these languages, compared with 3764 secondary students.
Umi Quor said learning a language had many educational benefits.
"You learn about geography, you learn about the culture, the food, customs, and traditions, learning a language is actually more like global learning to a certain extent," she said.
