A civil society outfit in Tamil Nadu on Monday launched a website to counter the Centre’s National Education Policy (NEP) and its plan to implement the three-language policy, days after the state BJP launched a website to garner support for the twin plans.

The State Platform for Common School System, Tamil Nadu (SPCSS-TN), launched www.thesamacheerkalvi.in with the appeal to people to reject the NEP 2020.

The three-language formula, introduced in NEP 1968, stated that children of Classes VI to X have to study the mother tongue, English and any modern Indian language as the third choice, preferably a southern Indian language in Hindi-speaking states and Hindi as the third language in non-Hindi-speaking states.

NEP 2020 modifies the three-language formula by allowing states to decide their third-language option.

Tamil Nadu, at loggerheads with the Centre over the NEP and the three-language policy, offers just Tamil and English in schools. It, however, allows children whose mother tongue is neither Tamil nor English to opt for their mother tongue as the third language.

The civil society website launched on Monday said the two-language formula in Tamil Nadu was appropriate. Making it mandatory to study a language which is not used in the child’s environment is an unnecessary burden on the kid, said Prince Gajendra Babu, the general secretary of the SPCSS-TN.

“A child will only acquire literacy in an additional language. No one can definitively say how useful that language will be to the child. We firmly state that the educational policy advocating the learning of three languages cannot be accepted based on the principle that no unnecessary
burden should be imposed on school-age children,” Babu said.

The Tamil Nadu BJP last week launched a website, www.puthiyakalvi.in, for a signature campaign to support the NEP and the three-language plan. The webpage has provisions for visitors to fill in their names, email IDs, contact numbers and the Assembly constituency they belong to.

The page displays statements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on the NEP. The website claims leaders associated with the DMK are running private schools where the three-language formula is being followed. By Sunday morning, nearly 4 lakh people had given their signatures.

Babu, however, said the common people are more concerned about affordable education for their children and not in favour of the NEP.

There are nearly 40,000 government schools in Tamil Nadu that follow the two-language policy. Around 15,000 private schools affiliated to central boards follow the three-language policy.