Seal of Biliteracy for Tamil

Any high school student in the state of Georgia. Student should have completed all the requirements for English and have 3.0 or above grade.

The Biliteracy Seal denotes that a student is proficient in Tamil in addition to English.

A seal would be added to their high school diploma.

Receiving a congratulatory letter from the Georgia Department of Education.

This is useful for college admission and further employment.

The state of Georgia passed a law and adopted this Seal of Biliteracy in 2016. Initially, only a handful of languages were included in this. With an effort from our school, Tamil was added to the list in 2018.

The student can take the Tamil proficiency test offered by Avant World Speak. Alpharetta Tamil school is an approved test center for this test and the  student can take the test at our school.

Avant, is a web-based test. There are two sections, speaking and writing an essay.

The speech is recorded and uploaded.  The essay is typed online in Tamil and submitted for evaluation.

The student needs a minimum score of 6 in botn sections of the test to earn the Seal of Biliteracy.

The student can take the exam at any time during high school.  However, the passing score is considered only when the student has completed the English requirement and has the GPA of 3.0.

The student should contact Alpharetta Tamil School by sending an email to contact@alpharettatamilschool.org

Yes, starting from 2020, ATS has started classes once a week on Sundays with a specific scope of preparing the students for the test.  The focus is to train the students to refresh what they have studied, improve their skills on critical thinking, essay writing, speaking skills, typing online in Tamil, and time management.

Every student is different in their proficiency level in Tamil.  The classes are small with 7-10 students in each class which allows the teacher to provide individual attention.   Our teachers are well trained to identify the readiness of their students. The students are encouraged to take the exam as soon as they are ready, any time before March to meet the April deadline in their senior year.

Yes.  They can retake the writing or speaking or both until they get the passing score.  There will be a fee of $10 for each test each time.

Normally it takes 3hrs for both tests.

It may take 2 weeks to get the results back.

The student should inform the high school academic counselor on taking the test.  ATS would provide the score to the high school.  The academic counselor will collect the application from the student and receive the official score from ATS.  They will verify if the student met the requirement for English.  After verification, they will submit the application to the DOE Georgia.

After receiving the applications submitted by the high school, the DOE issues the seal normally, just before the graduation in May.  The school will confirm the receipt, communicate the student and issue the seal to students at the graduation ceremony.