An increase in young families of Tamil background moving to the Greater Springfield region has seen an influx of student enrolment numbers at a Brisbane-based Tamil language learning school.
Thaai Tamil School is run by volunteers at three locations including Woodcrest State College at Springfield, Sunnybank State High School at Sunnybank, and St Paul’s School at Bald Hills.
Founder and president Mugunth Subramanian said about 50 volunteers were involved in teaching and assisting teachers across the three campuses.
“At the Springfield campus alone, there are around 20 volunteers,” Mr. Subramanian said.
“Volunteers are parents of the students in the school. They have various occupations ranging from IT professionals, childcare workers, medical professionals, university researchers, and main stream school teachers.
“They get involved in teaching if they are interested and know Tamil language skills. Also, we provide training required for them.”
He said within the Greater Springfield region the need to start a campus was necessary as many young Tamil families continued to move to the fastest growing region in south-east Queensland.
“We have 50 students learning Tamil at our Springfield campus,” he said.
“We hope the student numbers in the Greater Springfield area will increase in coming years.”
Mr Subramanian said having a Tamil school available to students in Greater Springfield was beneficial for many reasons.
“It helps students to learn the Tamil language, which is one of the oldest languages in the world and still very much actively used by more than 80 million people,” he said.
“For students of Tamil background, this school helps them to connect with their Tamil roots by giving them the opportunity to learn the Tamil language and culture.”
He said while most students who attended the Springfield campus were from the Springfield area, some travelled from neighbouring suburbs including Collingwood Park, Goodna, and Ipswich.
Thaai Tamil school was started in 2011.
Mr Subramanian said the school was started to provide an opportunity for Tamil community children to learn their language and to connect to their culture.
“Our objective is to start more campuses around Brisbane, so that travel time to get to the classes is less,” he said.
He said when the school first started in 2011 at Mount Ommaney library, only two students attended.
“Now we have more than 150 students learning Tamil language at three different campuses,” Mr Subramanian said.
“We take students from the Prep until Year 12. We have students ranging from four-and- half-years to 17.”
He said most students were from families with Indian, Sri Lankan and Malaysia backgrounds.
For more information visit thaaitamilschool.com