Punjab tops NITI Aayog School Education Quality Index 2026, says Harjot Singh Bains

Punjab Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains on Thursday said the state has overtaken Kerala to land the top rank in the NITI Aayog School Education Quality Index 2026. While 8,000 schools had no boundary walls and 4 lakh children sat on the floor in 2022, Punjab has 882 NEET qualifiers from government schools and has become the first state in the country to introduce Artificial Intelligence as a core subject from classes 1 to 12, Bains said. "This is the revolution the AAP government promised," he said.

Participating in a discussion on an education-related resolution moved by MLA Jaswant Singh Gajjanmajra in the Punjab Assembly here, Bains recalled the state of affairs when he assumed office in July 2022. Citing an initial infrastructure survey, Bains said that over 8,000 schools lacked boundary walls, 3,200 had no functional toilets and nearly 4 lakh children were sitting on the floor four years ago. Textbooks would reach schools only in October-November, wasting precious months of the academic session, he said. "Today, for the first time, textbooks reach district headquarters by February 15 and are fully distributed by March 31," he added.

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Bains said that over the years he visited over 2,000 government schools across every district of Punjab including border schools, zero-line villages, and remote areas. He informed the House that the government's Mission Samarth has emerged as one of India's largest foundational learning programmes. Under the model, students are grouped by learning ability rather than grade to ensure every child masters reading, writing and mathematics.

"When I visited schools in September-October 2022, I found class 8 students who could not write simple sentences. Some could not do basic addition and subtraction. We identified these students and taught them from class 3 syllabus level. Today, they are learning and improving," Bains said. The programme now covers nearly 12 lakh students and engages over 70,000 teachers annually, he said. Bains told the House that NEET-UG qualifiers from Punjab's government schools jumped from just 80 in 2021 to 882 in 2026. The results, he said, are the direct outcome of the 'Punjab Academic Coaching for Excellence' (PACE) initiative.