Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Sunday released Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2019-20 for schools to provide insights on the status of school education in States and UTs including key levers that drive their performance and critical areas for improvement.
The index covers 70 parameters to catalyse transformational change in school education including learning outcomes and quality, access to education, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance process.
Grading
Punjab, Chandigarh, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Kerala occupy the highest grade (Grade A++) for 2019-20. Most of the States/UTs have improved their grade in PGI 2019-20 compared to the earlier years.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Puducherry, Punjab and Tamil Nadu have improved overall PGI score by 10 per cent.
In terms of access to education, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Punjab have improved by by 10 per cent; in infrastructure and facilities, the A&N Islands and Odisha have gained 20 per cent or more. As many as thirteen States and UTs have shown improvement while Bihar and Meghalaya have recorded lowest scores in this domain.
In equity, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Odisha have shown more than 10 per cent improvement. In governance process, 19 States and UTs have shown improvement by 10 per cent (36 points) in governance process.
Improvements
For some of the States/UTs, improvements in data reporting mechanisms have contributed to the gain in positioning, while for some others, the improvements have been in specific domains.
Eleven states including Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, UP, West Bengal, Rajasthan are among the States that have improved their score by 10 to 20 per cent from last year. While, 10 States including Bihar, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir have improved their PGI score by 5 to 10 per cent.
The PGI States/UTs for 2019-20 is the third publication in this series. It envisages that the index would propel States and UTs towards undertaking multi-pronged interventions that will that will bring about the much-desired optimal education outcomes. The PGI helps the States/UTs to pinpoint the gaps and accordingly prioritise areas for intervention to ensure that the school education system is robust at every level.
In order to reflect the ground reality, efforts have been made to upgrade the data sources by making them more comprehensive, user-friendly, and subjecting them to cross-checks, thereby enhancing the reliability and robustness of the information obtained.