The NSW government has defended the funding of Chinese language classes in schools by the Chinese government, insisting they have no political content.
A petition with more than 4000 signatures has been tabled in the upper house of the NSW parliament, calling on the government to remove the Confucius Classroom Program from a number of Sydney schools, Fairfax reported on Wednesday.
The petition states foreign governments should not dictate what is taught in NSW schools, and that the curriculum should be free of propaganda.
Education Minister Adrian Piccoli says the Chinese government is only funding language courses and language teachers.
"There is no political content from the Chinese government or from any other government which supports languages in NSW government schools," he told AAP.
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China was not the only country which had expressed interest in funding languages taught in Australian schools, Mr Piccoli added.
"The Italian government has put some money towards it," he said.
"We strongly support the teaching of languages.
"If other countries and other governments want to make a contribution to assist in that language training, then we support it."
Commenting on Greens MP John Kaye's view that students in NSW schools would be given a biased view of history if instructed by foreign-paid language teachers, Mr Piccoli insisted that was not the case.
"These are language classes, and language classes alone," he said.
