The idea of a language passport: concept, origins, potential & limits

What is the idea, function, and effect of the “language passport”? The concept of portable certification of language skill originates in the Council of Europe’s European Language Portfolio (ELP) project. Over time it has come to function as a standardised summary of an individual’s language proficiency and, in some cases, of learning experiences and qualifications. To assess how far these innovations might be applied in Australia, it is useful first to trace their origins and context.

Common European frameworks for language

From the beginning the language passport was conceived as part of a suite of programs and initiatives of the overall European Language Portfolio (the other main components were the Language Biography and Dossier). These were devised and written by officers of the Council of Europe (not the European Union) through the 1990s and piloted from 1998–2000 and were revised against requested international comparative studies, including one from Australia (Lo Bianco, 2003). 

The foundational work is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), based on more than three decades of research beginning in the 1970s and culminating in the 2001 framework. Descriptor-scaling research conducted by Brian North and colleagues calibrated thousands of “can-do” statements using Rasch modelling and large teacher-judgement validation studies. This produced the six-level A1–C2 scale now widely used to align curricula, examinations, and qualifications across languages and educational systems. Compared with earlier proficiency systems, the CEFR was distinctive in seeking to create a multilingual, cross-institutional reference framework rather than a scale tied to a single language or examination system. It remains arguably the largest coordinated international effort to construct empirically calibrated descriptors of language proficiency across multiple languages and national systems, which helps explain its rapid diffusion and adaptation well beyond Europe, though not in Australia.

Asian Adaptations and Extensions 

Several Asian countries have adopted CEFR-referenced frameworks, most prominently in English education but in some cases extending to other languages. Japan has developed CEFR-based frameworks for Japanese itself, including the Japan Foundation’s JF Standard for Japanese-Language Education and the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Reference Framework for Japanese-Language Education (日本語教育の参照枠), both of which adopt CEFR levels and “can-do” descriptors. CEFR has also been widely used in Japan to structure English education, particularly through the CEFR-J project, although there is no official mapping between CEFR and the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). China’s China Standards of English Language Ability (CSE) is a nine-level national proficiency scale referenced to CEFR, while South Korea has used CEFR comparisons in English curriculum reforms and benchmarking, although its TOPIK test for Korean is not formally CEFR-based. 

In Southeast Asia, Vietnam’s Six-Level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework is explicitly based on CEFR and applies across foreign languages, mapping Levels 1–6 to A1–C2. Malaysia and Thailand have also incorporated CEFR into national English education reforms, though the framework is applied primarily to English rather than across languages. In most Asian countries English remains the main second language taught but in recent decades the mother tongues of minority communities have been steadily gaining curriculum presence (Premsrirat and Hirsh, 2024) hence the need for descriptors and frameworks between national languages and languages other than English.  

As is evident the CEFR has become one of the most influential instruments in contemporary language education policy. Originally intended to promote comparability and mobility within European education systems, its shared proficiency scale (A1–C2) allows curricula, textbooks, examinations, and qualifications across different languages and countries to be aligned within a common descriptive framework, in effect it has become a meta-framework for describing language competence. The “localised” adaptations reinterpret its descriptors to suit national curricula, assessment traditions, and sociolinguistic contexts, hence the active versions in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea), the Middle East, Latin America, and parts of Africa, where ministries of education and examination bodies map local standards to CEFR levels. 

How has the CEFR (and the Languages Passport) Fared in Australia?

The main systematic study looking at CEFR awareness and attitudes in Australian universities (Normand-Marconnet and Lo Bianco, 2015) showed very uneven familiarity (isolated pockets of focused attention) and selective uptake, but generally limited traction overall.

To see why it pays to look at the main benefits claimed for the language passport, which are transparency, comparability, and portability, all of which derive from the CEFR and its empirical base. Over time the passport idea diffused into Europass and into national or institutional adaptations (e.g., higher education language records, school-level “language passports”), sometimes decoupled from the original frameworks, and varying in rigour and usefulness (see section below Variations of Language Passport). Although both the CEFR and the language passport concept have influenced experimental initiatives in Australia, neither has been institutionalised nationally. The attraction of the passport in a system such as ours, where articulation between primary and secondary language learning is often weak, is that it offers individuals a portable record of their linguistic repertoire, formal qualifications, self-assessed proficiency, intercultural experience, and informal learning. At least at the level of portability we have used some of this prior work to improve our offerings in language education, but much less so with transparency and comparability.

The fragmentation of take-up reflects Australia’s decentralised education system, despite periods in which the country has been notably innovative in language policy, shaped by its distinctive multilingual profile of English dominance, community languages, Indigenous languages, and Asian language learning. One example of this is the multi-jurisdiction Community Languages Advanced Level Examination (CCAFL), introduced in 1994 as a national examination mechanism to allow senior secondary students to obtain formal certification in languages for which there are very small candidature numbers and therefore insufficient enrolments to sustain a full school subject. Although not itself a passport model CCAFL illustrates the value of portable certification for small-candidature languages. Coordinated through the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) on behalf of all Australian jurisdictions CCAFL is recognised within the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority senior secondary framework. Students sit the CCAFL in languages not otherwise offered as examinable school subjects in their state or territory, and the examination is then credited within their local senior secondary certificate (such as the Victorian Certificate of Education, HSC, SACE, etc). This shared national assessment instrument allows students to demonstrate advanced literacy and cultural competence in a wide range of community or heritage languages, many of which of course are Asian languages.

By pooling candidature across jurisdictions and using a common examination, CCAFL allows Australia’s diverse migrant and heritage languages to be recognised in formal credentialing even when enrolments are too small to sustain separate curricula or examinations within individual states. 

In our study (Lo Bianco and Slaughter, 2009) we identify some experimentation in universities exploring ways of aligning course outcomes with CEFR descriptors and recording student proficiency in forms resembling a language passport. Australian universities using CEFR-linked documentation find that it assists with curriculum benchmarking, international student mobility, and articulation between language programs (Normand-Marconnet & Lo Bianco, 2015) and with more Asian universities using its assumptions and grids greater familiarity here with CEFR might facilitate shared conversations around language standards.  

 Other strands of comparative documentation also exist, but it is enough to note here that several portfolio-based initiatives emerged in schools in Australia, especially during the 2000s, when curriculum reforms emphasised learner reflection and intercultural capability. Within these the most successful appear to be those pilot projects which adapted the European portfolio model to Australian contexts, encouraging students to record their language experiences across school learning, community use, and heritage languages. In some experiments the passport idea was broadened to capture multilingual repertoires beyond formal language classes, reflecting Australia’s large migrant-language population, community and heritage language schools and other forms of provision. This is the third area of interest for the passport idea, the field of heritage and community language education. In this sector there is regular discussion among community language organisations and policy researchers, on how the language passport can recognise the linguistic resources of bilingual students whose competencies may not be fully captured by mainstream school assessment.  

In such contexts the passport model has been seen as a possible tool for recognising informal and family-based language learning and for documenting plurilingual abilities across different domains of life. 

Overall, Australian engagement with the language passport has been continuous and at times innovative, but institutionally restricted and marked by limited research investment. I should also note that there are pockets of opposition to the Passport, and to CEFR-like scales and descriptors generally. These are rooted in philosophies of learning and language that diverge from the standardising and psychometric assumptions on which these are based.

Variations of Language Passport

The language passport notion and practice in Europe has undergone several changes, perhaps the most relevant for Australia is Europass, introduced in 2004. This created a standardised set of documents designed to make skills and qualifications transparent and portable across Europe. Within this system, the Europass Language Passport functions as a self-assessment tool, in a structured way that supports families and schools/universities to use this practically, so that individuals record their language abilities against CEFR proficiency levels (A1–C2) across listening, reading, spoken interaction, spoken production, and writing.

The main difference with the European Language Portfolio is that Europass emphasises mobility and employability, aiming to engage employers and educational institutions to interpret language skills consistently across countries. More recent reforms of Europass (post-2020) have seen the separate “language passport” document absorbed into the Europass online profile and CV format, so that language proficiency continues to be recorded using CEFR levels. In effect this means the language passport idea has evolved from its original pedagogical aspect or character into a standardised labour-market credential format, shifting CEFR-based descriptors from educational settings into broader systems of skills recognition and professional mobility.

Proficiency in Asian languages

As stated, a key part of the effectiveness of a passport model is evidence about proficiency outcomes. Large scale assessments of proficiency outcomes from publicly funded Asian language schemes have been surprisingly scarce and inconsistent. One notable exception is the Student Achievement in Asian Languages Education (SAALE) project (Scarino, et al, 2011). SAALE was effectively the first national study in Australia to investigate student achievement in school-taught Asian languages (Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean), and notable for using actual learner performance data rather than policy assumptions. The project demonstrated a wide diversity of learner achievements: across languages, across school-levels, and within the same nominal “level”, year, learners display markedly different profiles of strengths and weaknesses in speaking, listening, reading and writing (Scarino, et al, 2012). 

This diversity, however, often masks low overall achievement, given the preponderance of low dosage methods, within low intensity programs, made worse by variable teacher qualifications, disparate curriculum aims (though this problem has been partially alleviated in the intervening years) and the mix of L1 heritage (LH) and L2 learners in the same classes. 

Given this variation, Scarino et al question the validity of uniform “standards” or one-size-fits-all proficiency expectations for Asian languages in schools.  This is an important call to realism and pragmatism which remains valid today, given the deteriorated position of language education in the intervening years. The finding that achievement in Asian languages is highly variable, with a small minority reaching higher proficiency and the large majority remaining at low levels, especially among L2 learners who experience short, discontinuous programs, is perhaps not surprising. More troubling is that outcomes documentation in Australian language education has been sporadic and inadequate, which is not conducive to successful implementation of a seriously minded language passport scheme. In my own commentary on the SAALE report I noted that Asian language policy in Australia has been “tempted 

by targets” but it should also be “tempered by results”, a view that I believe remains valid today. It is a caution to policy makers that setting targets is an understandable and, in some ways, justified move but once set targets can remain as a kind of reproach if they were not realistic or well-conceived.  Our policy history is full of recurrent waves of aspirational numerical goals for enrolments and proficiency that are rhetorically powerful but structurally unattainable when set against empirical evidence of modest, uneven achievement and massive attrition from programs.  

It is worth reiterating, only because the ambition is laudable, that the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP) adopted by the Rudd government in 2008 set a target of both numbers and proficiency outcomes. 

“…at least 12 per cent of students exiting Year 12 by 2020 with a fluency in one of the four Asian languages sufficient for engaging in trade and commerce in Asia and/or university study” (Australian Government, 2008).  

Note how this target was expected to be achieved in a mere twelve years, with little effort to understand what proficiency “sufficient for engaging in trade and commerce in Asia” means, or for the parallel aim of “university study” (presumably for participating in programs where one of these target languages was the medium of instruction).  Both the commercial and the academic aspiration here require very high and specialised registers of language knowledge that are not typically achieved by high school language teaching.   

A total of $62 million was invested in NALSSP, after the much larger funding to its predecessor, the National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools (NALSAS) strategy which ran from 1994 to 2002, and over whose eight-year lifespan, the Commonwealth government invested more than $200 million. These are by far the greatest investments ever made in stimulating language education improvements, but critical research, infrastructure and long-term realistic language planning was relatively neglected. 

An equally critical question is the, in my view, never satisfactorily discussed role of background speakers enrolled in these language programs, an inevitable and welcome aspect of any language endeavour in a multicultural and therefore multilingual society. Hence effective Asian language policy in Australia cannot be developed without reference to the wider language ecology of Australia and failure to do so in past iterations in our policy history weighs heavily on the modest successes achieved. 

Concluding Remarks 

Judged by the criteria of transparency, comparability, and portability, the language passport has clear strengths. When tied to self-reports against “can-do” descriptors, passports help make discussion of proficiency (and therefore of the outcome from language programs) more intelligible across institutions and countries, within families, across school sectors, and between schooling and higher education. With the later developments reported above these benefits, not always extensive but certainly notable, link to employment and professional mobility in positive ways.   

There are many cultural and reflective benefits as well, fostering greater language awareness and knowledge about how language skills develop, change and vary across contexts and purposes. Passports can promote intercultural awareness, learner autonomy and reflection, and when tied to the other instruments (Biography, Dossier) these latter benefits become more pronounced, but we have pursued these ideas less systematically in Australian education. A final benefit that I should mention is that passports extend and deepen traditional assessment.  In some jurisdictions I have observed where these are used (in China, Europe, and Japan) the passport was valued because it complements high-stakes tests, adding nuanced, qualitative information about what the student knows about the target foreign language, (mostly English in these examples but not exclusively). I have seen and discussed its use with teachers of Korean in Japan, and Spanish programs in China. So there are many and several deep benefits of the passport idea and it should be promoted, but set against some measures of and descriptions of proficiency.  

 There are some limitations and critiques that should be mentioned as well. 

The most evident relates to the reliability of self-assessment. Some studies note that self-assessment against CEFR scales can be uneven and shaped by learner beliefs, cultural norms, and familiarity with the descriptors (Fulcher, 2004; Hulstijn, 2007). These issues can raise questions about how valid a passport model can be, and given that Australia has not adopted anything like the CEFR what ‘standards’ would be applied for self-report or even teacher reports of proficiency gains? This is not a small issue and is potentially controversial. Other limitations or critiques refer to implementation unevenness, a risk with any such measure that relies of individual participation, not to mention the extra or additional burdens placed on already busy teachers.  Not surprisingly there has been the occasional resort to ‘bureaucratisation’ of language passports, but when they are reduced to a form filling exercise devoid of the reflective aspect their primary purpose is lost.   

In conclusion, the language passport can represent a valuable attempt to bring together assessment, recognition, and learner agency in second language education. If it were to be promoted in Australia it would have to be done in multiple languages, international (Asian or European) languages, and community or heritage languages (Asian, European and many others), and Indigenous languages, though the latter would require extensive discussion with communities about the purpose and outcomes intended. The overall conclusion I would offer about their use is that effectiveness relies heavily on the mediation of teachers, the understanding by students, and the preparation that is undertaken between them (and ideally also families) to build comprehension of the framework against which records are entered onto the passport.  Most importantly, the question should be asked about how the passport will be embedded in a broader process and framework of pedagogy, language reflection and improvement. If its main goal is administrative then perhaps a different name is required. 

In its standard or canonical form, the language passport offers an overview of the learner’s “linguistic identity” since it lists languages, certifications, and significant experiences, and ties these to self-assessment of skills against an objective or at least empirically sound framework. It communicates this information across sectors, levels and administrations and enhances coordination and efficiency. Any number of permutations can be imagined for Australia’s circumstances, and several creditable efforts have been made to adapt and benefit from its basic purpose of portability, communication of achievement, etc. Language passports can only ever be one element within and wider revitalisation of language education in Australia, but if supported systematically, could make a positive contribution to a desperately needed systemic improvement to this vital area of education. 

This paper was included as a part of the wider submission to the Inquiry into Building Asia Capability in Australia through the education system and beyond in 2026.

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