Who are we

The ‘Victorian Tamil Association – Tamil School’ was established in 1979 and registered as a not for profit, incorporated association. Initially, the Tamil classes were conducted in Prahran Migrant Resource centre with six students and one teacher. It was the first Tamil Language school in Australia. The school experienced a very rapid growth and by 1989, it had ten campuses across Melbourne with over 300 students and 25 teachers. But after a brief drop in the student numbers between 2002 and 2010, the school had a very steady growth in terms of student numbers as well as the number of Teachers, since 2011. At present, we have nine campuses across Victoria, with around 900 students and 74 teachers.

We have classes from Kinder to VCE at four of our campuses and in the process of getting the approval to have VCE classes at our Narre Warren campus as well. The main reasons for the growth are:

• Introduction of new textbooks to teach our students Tamil as a second language.

• We employ qualified teachers at all levels at our schools.

• We train and re-train our teachers regularly (minimum of 20 Hrs professional development per year)

• We consistently produce excellent results at VCE level. 

• We work with parents to motivate and keep the children at the language (to reduce early drop-outs) 

• Our gaol is not making profit, but teaching more children Tamil language, therefore, we charge very little fee and provide high quality education.

Typical Student/Family Profile

In the past, most of the students who attended Tamil language schools were recent arrivals to Australia. The children arrived in Australia with their parents and grandparents and wanted to learn Tamil to be able communicate with their grandparents most of whom did not speak English.

But nowadays, more than 70% of the students are children born in Australia. We have many families, the parents do not speak Tamil, but they want their children to learn Tamil. We are encouraged by this trend and encouraging all those who want to learn Tamil, including adults, to join our school.

School Staff

We have 78 highly qualified, experienced and trained teachers at our school. We believe quality teachers provide quality education. Therefore, we spend a fair portion of our school budget in the staff development and training every year. Our teachers are fully trained and retrained on ‘child safety’ and ‘child phycology’ to ensure our students are safe at our schools