CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu’s State Education Policy (SEP) is built on equity, inclusion, and future-readiness, unlike the National Education Policy (NEP), which is restrictive, School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi said on Saturday.

Speaking at “Engal Kalvi Engal Urimai”, a seminar organised by the DMK Student Wing at the Anna Centenary Library in Chennai, he reaffirmed the State’s two-language policy and questioned the reliability of the NEP syllabus, asking how a government that tries to hide and suppress findings of Keezhadi could be trusted to let NCERT present Tamil Nadu’s history in textbooks.

He urged student cadres of the party, as well as other students, to study both SEP and NEP closely to understand what was at stake. Unlike the NEP, which will be revised only once in three years, the SEP syllabus would be updated every year, he added.

Addressing the seminar, Makkal Needhi Maiam president and Rajya Sabha MP Kamal Haasan reiterated the need to continue pressing for education to be restored to the State List. “If the Union government truly believes in cooperative federalism, it should begin with education. States understand their people and culture best,” he said.