New Zealand’s Ministry of Education has pushed back against a parliamentary petition seeking national recognition for Hindi in schools, saying significant demand for Hindi as a standalone senior secondary subject has not been demonstrated.
The ministry told Parliament’s Petitions Committee that consultation conducted during the 2021 NCEA review did not identify sufficient demand to establish Hindi as a nationally supported subject.
The response follows a petition by Keely Kalirai Cairns, presented to Parliament by Labour MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan, calling for Hindi to be offered as a recognised language option and for teaching resources to be developed across primary, intermediate and secondary schools.
Hindi can already be taught by individual schools where there is sufficient community demand, but it does not currently have a nationally developed pathway leading to senior secondary qualifications.
The issue is becoming more significant as New Zealand replaces NCEA with the New Zealand Certificate of Education and New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education from 2029 and 2030. Under the new system, students will study full subjects within the national curriculum.
The ministry said curriculum decisions must balance demand for individual subjects with the resources required to support them nationally.
Cairns argued that Hindi deserves greater recognition given the size of New Zealand’s Indian community. She pointed to the 292,092 people who identified as Indian in the 2023 Census and said Hindi is the country’s fourth most spoken language.
She also argued that formal recognition could help preserve language and cultural connections among younger generations of Indian New Zealanders.
The ministry has not ruled out reconsidering Hindi in future curriculum reviews, saying demand for languages such as Hindi could be assessed as the new curriculum and qualification system develops.
For now, however, Hindi remains outside New Zealand’s nationally supported senior-secondary subject pathway.
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