Guwahati: Meghalaya has emerged as the lowest-performing state in the Ministry of Education’s latest Performance Grading Index (PGI), which evaluates states and Union Territories on school education across indicators, including learning outcomes, infrastructure, and access.
The Union Ministry of Education’s PGI 2.0 report consolidates findings for both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years. This report evaluates states and Union Territories (UTs) on their educational performance across six key domains and scored each of them out of a score of 1,000.
The domains were learning outcomes and quality, access, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance processes, and teacher education and training.
Chandigarh, Punjab, Delhi, Gujarat and Odisha are amongst top performers in the 2023-24 Performing Grade Index that assesses school education at the district level, according to a report by the Ministry of Education.
“The PGI has been conceptualised as a tool to catalyse transformational change in the field of school education with an objective of assessment of the relative performance of all the districts on a uniform scale,” a senior ministry official said.
The PGI 2.0 report categorized states and UTs into ten performance bands based on their scores. The highest band, Level 1 or ‘Daksh’, included scores ranging from 951 to 1,000, while the lowest, Level 10 or ‘Akanshi-3’, covered scores from 401 to 460.
No state or UT made it into the top four bands (761-1,000). Chandigarh, with an overall score of 703, was placed in the fifth band, ‘prachesta-1′. No state or UT was in ‘prachesta-2′ or the sixth band.
“The top-most grade attained is ‘prachesta-1′, i.e., score range 701-760, indicating that there is huge scope for improvement in performance by states,” the report stated.
Scoring 417.9 points, Meghalaya is the only state in the 10th and lowest grade in 2023-24. The state scored 401.6 in 2022-23, indicating some improvement since the last time.
Overall, 24 states/UTs improved their score in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23, according to the report. However, in the remaining states and UTs, the score deteriorated between 2022-23 and 2023-24.
These are Bihar, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal.
In the domain of learning outcomes, considered the most important, Chandigarh, Punjab, and Puducherry were in the sixth band, ‘prachesta-2′, whereas Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir were in the seventh band, ‘prachesta-3′. All other states ranked lower.
In the domain of access, Odisha topped the rankings by securing a place in the highest band, ‘daksh‘, which has a score range of 941–1,000. Ten other states followed Odisha in the second band, termed ‘utkarsh‘, which has a score range of 881–940. Chandigarh, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Telangana, among others, were in this group.
The report highlighted that Bihar and Jharkhand made remarkable progress in access between 2022-23 and 2023-24, moving up from the sixth band to the fifth.
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In terms of infrastructure, only Chandigarh featured in the third band, ‘ati uttam‘, which has a score range of 821–880. The UT of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, as well as Delhi, were placed in the second band, ‘uttam‘, which has a score range of 761–820.
In the case of equity, all states were within the first three bands, indicating a relatively balanced performance across the country in this particular domain.
The gap between India’s top and bottom-performing states and Union territories in school education has narrowed over time, with interstate performance disparity declining from 51 per cent in 2017-18 to 41 per cent in 2023-24.
