An education professor says the timing's all wrong for a bid to require our kids to learn a second language.

The National Party is set to release a draft Bill on the matter today.

If successful, it could force every primary and intermediate school to teach at least one language from a yet-to-be-decided list.

Auckland University professor Peter O'Connor told Chris Lynch updating the curriculum's important - but it's a surprising move.

"Schools are in nothing short of crisis mode at the moment. There's a real problem about attracting teachers. Adding something extra right now, not necessarily the smartest move."

The bill comes from former Education Minister Nikki Kaye,

"The case for languages is really clear around cognitive ability," she told the NZ Herald.

"We need to legislate for this, it's not an optional thing to provide that access to languages, and that is a big shift as a country."

The proportion of all primary and intermediate students learning a second language, in addition to English and Māori, has more than doubled from 13 per cent in the year 2000 to 29 per cent in 2016.

At least some study of te reo Māori has also become almost universal, increasing from 79 per cent of all primary and intermediate students in 2000 to 95 per cent.

However the number studying foreign languages in secondary schools has dropped from 24 per cent of students in 2000 to 19 per cent.

Kaye's bill would empower the Education Minister to issue a "national language policy" and to prescribe "a minimum of 10 national priority languages, which must include te reo Māori and NZ Sign Language".

When she first announced the policy in August, she said Mandarin, French, Spanish, Japanese and Korean were "likely to be included".

She is now calling for cross-party agreement on a long-term policy.

"We want to reach across parties. We realise this is not a short-term thing. In order to put the resources into this, you would need to build up to this over time," she said.

"My ideal would be that the government adopts the legislation or principles of effectively universal access to second language learning in schools."

Current Education Minister Chris Hipkins said last August that it would cost $117 million a year to pay for a language teacher in every primary school - far more than the $160 million that National proposed to spend on the policy over four years.

This week he said there were clear benefits to more students learning a second language, however, the Government's focus at this stage was on ensuring there were enough teachers for the subjects currently on offer.

"We've inherited critical and worsening teacher shortages across a range of subjects, including languages and addressing that is one of our top priorities."

While Hipkins said he welcomed any opportunity to "find genuine common cause with the Opposition" it had not yet raised the matter of second language learning with him.

LISTEN TO PETER O'CONNOR TALK WITH CHRIS LYNCH ABOVE

- with content from NZ Herald