Despite concerns over the appropriateness of outsourcing public school lesson time to an undemocratic foreign government body, the program – known as Confucius Classrooms – was rolled out to a further three Victorian schools in 2015, with plans to sign up more this year.

Confucius Classrooms are administered by the Confucius Institute, headquartered in Beijing's agency known colloquially as Hanban, the Office of the Chinese Language Council.

In an attractive package for cash-strapped school principals eager to offer their students Asian languages, the schools are paid $10,000 in the first year for teaching resources, and supplied with "teaching assistants" who are hired and paid by Hanban in China.

Officially, the Confucius Institutes are non-profit public institutions promoting Chinese language and culture worldwide. Since their inception in 2004, many Australian universities have opened a Confucius Institute.

But they are viewed uneasily by some China watchers. Hanban is headed by a government official, the Vice-Minister of Education, and since 2014 about eight universities worldwide have closed Confucius Institutes after deciding they were too closely directed by Beijing, restricted academic freedom or even – in the case of Japan's Osaka Sangyo​ University – allegedly provided a front for espionage.

And in late 2014, the Toronto School Board scrapped its Confucius Classrooms program due to concerns about its connection with the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda aims, where topics including Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square student massacre, Tibet, the Uighurs​ and Taiwan are highly sensitive.

Independent China expert Professor Jocelyn Chey of the University of Sydney said: "One might say that if a school program is 'just teaching language', it could not be political, but with Chinese everything is political."

Tsering​ Dorjee​, president of the Victorian branch of the Tibetan Community of Australia, said Australians should be "alert and careful" about the teachings of an Institute set up and funded by the Chinese Communist Party.

"There are Confucius Institutes set up all over the world … and they have a political purpose," Mr Dorjee said.

"China is trying to influence the Western world so they are presenting it [the Confucius Classrooms program] as something valuable and attractive, but actually it's not."

In Victoria two separate Confucius Institutes – hosted at, but independent to, the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University – administer and co-ordinate the programs across 12 public and private schools at both the primary and secondary level.

La Trobe University added three new schools to the program last year – state school Charles La Trobe P-12 College and private schools Ivanhoe Girls Grammar and Camberwell Grammar – and has plans for a second intake later this year.

The Confucius Institute at the University of Melbourne could not immediately be reached for comment about its future plans.

Jean Zhang​, senior administration officer and program co-ordinator at the Confucius Institute at La Trobe University, said in addition to $10,000 upfront cash, participating schools received 50,000 yuan ($10,600) worth of "books or cultural material" each year. Assistant teachers from China are paid for "if they require, based on applications", she said.

The Institute at La Trobe will reach out to prospective new schools based on whether they already offer Chinese language programs, she said.

A Victorian Education Department spokesperson said the "focus and intent" of Confucius Classrooms was to supplement schools' existing Chinese language programs.

"Improving links between our schools and countries in our region has been shown to have great positive benefits for students, including increasing interaction and engagement through sister schools and reciprocal student and teacher visits," the spokesperson said.

Former Greens MLC John Kaye, who died this month, put questions to NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli in Parliament in December last year about oversight of Confucius Classrooms. In NSW, the Confucius Institute at the NSW Department of Education has sole responsibility for establishing the Confucius Classrooms program in NSW public schools.

The minister refused to answer questions about payments, teacher hiring, the government's memorandum of understanding with Hanban or bureaucrats' trips to China, but said oversight of Confucius Classrooms was the responsibility of individual principals. Department teachers are supposed to be present during classes, but it was not revealed how many are fluent in Chinese.

"These classes might be free to Treasury, but they are paid for by exposing children to a foreign government's propaganda machine," said David Shoebridge, the Greens' acting education spokesman.

"Most Confucius Classrooms operate with no department official having any idea what is being taught or how disputed issues such as human rights and contested territories are handled."

He said the government should follow Toronto's lead and replace teachers on the Chinese government payroll with teachers accredited in Australia for Chinese classes.

The Chinese embassy referred Fairfax's questions to Hanban, and attempts to contact Hanban were unsuccessful.