Chandigarh, Punjab, Delhi among top performers in school education during 2023-24: MoE report

New Delhi: Chandigarh, Punjab, Delhi, Gujarat and Odisha are among top performers in the 2023-24 Performing Grade Index that assesses school education at the district level, according to a report of the Ministry of Education. Other top performing states and Union territories include Kerala, Daman and Diu, Haryana, Goa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, the report said.

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Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) measures the performance of states and UTs in school education. Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) has so far released PGI report for states and UTs for the years 2017-18 to 2021-22. Meghalya has been adjudged as the lowest performing state in the latest report. Puducherry, Himachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and West Bengal are among the average performers as per the index.

"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 in a uniform scale," a senior ministry official said. The PGI-D structure comprises total weightage of 600 points across 74 indicators, which are grouped under six categories -- outcomes, effective classroom transaction, infrastructure facilities and student entitlements, school safety and child protection, digital learning and governance process.

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These categories are further divided into 11 domains -- learning outcomes and quality, access outcomes, teacher availability and professional development outcomes, learning management, learning enrichment activities, infrastructure facilities, student entitlements, school safety and child protection, digital learning, funds convergence and utilisation, attendance monitoring systems and school leadership development.

Following the same approach of state PGI, districts are graded. In PGI-D, the nomenclature for PGI scores is classified into various grades. Highest achievable grade in PGI-D is 'Utkarsh', which is for districts scoring more than 90 per cent of the total points in that category or overall. The category and overall scores are then reduced by an equal width of 10 per cent of total points in that category or overall points for arriving to the next grade.