BTEB offer a whole-school curriculum for 5 to 19 year olds. The examination is designed for learners to have a working knowledge of the language and who wants to consolidate, and develop further, their understanding to progress in their academic or professional careers. Learners will gain an understanding of how to use Tamil effectively in the type of situations, and Tamil-speaking environments, that they will encounter in their daily lives. The aim is to enable learners to achieve greater fluency, accuracy and confidence in the written language and to achieve a level of practical communication which can also form the basis for further, more in-depth language study.

Awarding organisation OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations) recently announced plans to reduce its Asset Languages assessment scheme from 25 to only 5 languages (French, German, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin) from 2014. This has in part been as a result of UK government policy not to recognise Asset Languages as contributing towards the English Baccalaureate. This decision will leave many languages and language learners without accreditation in the UK. One of the languages affected by the above is Tamil Language.

In the absence of the OCR examination, it became necessary to have an examination board to conduct the examination. BTEB (examination board) was formed in 2014 to conduct the examination in Tamil Language and get this qualification accredited by an approved institution in the United Kingdom. The first examination was conducted in Reading and Writing skills in Tamil Language in June 2014 with 374 candidates from 12 Tamil Schools across the United Kingdom taking the examinations. In the year 2015, the examination is being conducted in all four skills – Speaking, Reading, Listening and Writing.

BTEB is being registered as a charitable organisation in England and Wales. Following narrative provides the reasoning for the effort taken to establish the BTEB. The Tamil language is a member of the Dravidian language family, a group of about thirty languages (~225 million speakers in total) concentrated in Southern India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia as well as in Pakistan. The Dravidian language family is distinct from the Indo-European language family (which includes Hindi and many other Indian languages, Farsi, and the Germanic and Romance languages among others). Of all Tamil speakers (totalling about 65 million) over ninety percent live in Tamil Nadu, one of India's four southern states. However, Tamil is also spoken in neighbouring states as well as both a first and second language. Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka, located across the Palk Bay from Tamil Nadu, has a sizable Tamil speaking minority numbering 20% of the population (3-4 million). However, Tamil is not confined to South Asia. It is also spoken by sizable populations in South East Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, and Fiji) as well as in South Africa and parts of East Africa, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and Trinidad, Guyana, Mauritius. It is an official language in India, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.

It has a long literary tradition dating to antiquity and has been spoken and written in southern India for several thousand years (the earliest inscriptions date from 200 BC). The oldest literature, the Sangam literature, is a poetic tradition that deals mainly with love (Akam literature) and war (Puram literature). However, the ancient Tamil literary tradition also spans topic such as grammar (Tolkappiyam), philosophy and ethics (Tirukkural), as well as epics. Tamil, from Sangam on, has been written in a syllabic script (called the Grantha script) derived from the Brahmi script (dating from 2000 B.C). Contra a phonetic script (an alphabet) where each written symbol represents a phonetic unit (like a consonant or vowel) and words are combined from these letters, in a syllabic script symbols stand in for syllables (e.g., க, ka, and கà¯Â, ku, are separate symbols). In addition to these, there are symbols that denote the vowels and the consonants in isolation.

Tamil is a diglossic language. This means that there is a large disparity between the written form of the language and the spoken form. These differences include grammatical differences, vocabulary differences, and pronunciation differences. As the Tamil literary tradition is a source of pride, especially its antiquity and purity, written Tamil has traditionally been attempted to be kept relatively conservative to change. The literary form is considered the high, or prestige, form and the spoken variety a low status form by all social classes. This means that, by and large, literary Tamil is used in formal occasions and settings--most literature, media (including radio and television), political speeches, etc.--whereas the spoken form is used in everyday conversation.

Despite this diglossia, Tamil like all other languages, has received influence from other languages. Historically, one of the main sources for loan words has been Sanskrit, an Indo-European language that is a sister language of Latin and Greek, and a parent language of Hindi, Bengali, and other northern Indian languages. Beside Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic words have also has their impact on Tamil.

BTEB remains at the forefront of its field, maintaining high standards by having qualified examiners and promoting high standards in education.