14 hours ago
Chandigarh, Punjab, Delhi toppers in Centre's PGI school education report; Meghalaya ranks at bottom
Chandigarh, Punjab, and Delhi were the top three performers in the Ministry of Education's latest assessment of school education indicators, the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 report for 2023-24, which was released Wednesday.
The PGI was introduced in 2017, and the ministry revamped it as PGI 2.0 in 2021. It is an assessment of school education along six domains – learning outcome and quality, access, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance processes, teacher education, and training. The latest report, covering the years 2022-23 and 2023-24, draws data from the National Achievement Survey 2021, the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), and information on the mid-day meal programme (PM-POSHAN).
States/UTs are scored out of 1,000 points. No state/UT has scored in the higher ranges of 761 and above. The highest scorer was Chandigarh at 703, followed by Punjab at 631.1, and Delhi at 623.7. Kerala, Gujarat, Odisha, Haryana, Goa, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan also scored in the 581-640 range. The state that scored the lowest was Meghalaya (417.9). Just above it were Arunachal Pradesh (461.4), Mizoram (464.2), Nagaland (468.6), and Bihar (471.9).
In the middle range of 521-580 were Uttar Praded, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.
The scores are meant to help states/UTs identify areas where they need to make interventions. Of the 36 states/UTs, 25 saw an improvement in their scores in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23. Chandigarh scored 687.8 in 2022-23, and Punjab scored 614.1, followed by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands at 606.4, and Gujarat at 602.2.
Chandigarh was the top scorer in 2021-22 as well, with a score of 659, followed by Punjab (647.4) and Delhi (636.2).
'Since the grading and the indicators have undergone changes, the results of PGI 2.0 are not strictly comparable with the previous PGI reports, though the pattern of achievement seems to be like the previous PGI results,' the latest report stated.
Referring to the inter-state disparity, the report said, 'The maximum and minimum scores obtained by the States/UTs in 2023-24 are 719 and 417 respectively.'
