Sikar in Rajasthan is the highest performing district in school education, followed by Jhunjhunu and Jaipur, according to the Union Ministry of Education’s Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D).
The three districts fall into the ‘Utkarsh’ category (scoring 81-90 percent on a scale of 100), with Junjhunu scoring the maximum (236 out of 290) in learning outcomes. Also, in second class ‘Ati-uttam’, Rajasthan is significantly ahead of the second and third top states with 24 of its districts in this category. The other states whose districts performed best in the latest index released Monday by the Ministry of Education (MoE) are Punjab with 14 districts in the ‘Ati-uttam’ class (scoring 71-80 percent on a scale of 100), followed by Gujarat and Kerala with 13 districts each in this category. On the other hand, there are 12 states and Union Territories that do not have districts in the Ati-uttam and Uttam categories, including seven of the eight states from the Northeast region.
The ministry on Monday released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2018-19 and 2019-20, which rates the performance of the school education system at the district level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis. PGI-D divides the districts into 10 classes, with the highest score achievable ‘Daksh’, which is for districts that score more than 90 percent of the total points in that category or in general.
The ‘Utkarsh’ category is for districts with a score between 81-90 percent, followed by ‘Ati-Uttam’ (71-80 percent), ‘Uttam’ (61-70 percent), ‘Prachesta-I’ (51-60 percent), ‘Prachesta-II’ (41-50 percent) and ‘Prachesta III’ (31-40 percent). The lowest number in BGA-D is called ‘Akanshi-3’ and that is for scores up to 10 percent of the total points. According to the report for 2019-20 and 2018-19, none of the districts achieved the highest Daksh degree in both 2019-20 and 2018-19, meaning there is ample scope for the districts to further their performance in the coming years. improve.
Three districts reached Utkarsh class in 2019-20 by getting more than 80 percent of the score, there was none in 2018-19 in this class. Moreover, the number of districts in the Ati-uttam class has increased from 49 to 86 during 2018-19 to 2019-20, showing remarkable improvements. “The ultimate goal of BGA-D is to help the districts prioritize and improve school education interventions to achieve the highest grade. Eighty-three Indicator-Based BGA for District (PGI-D) is designed to assess the performance of all districts in school education. The data is entered per district via an online portal. The PGI-D is expected to help state education departments identify district-level gaps and improve their performance in a decentralized manner,” said a senior MoE official.
“The indicator-based BGA score shows where a neighborhood needs to improve. The PGI-D will display the relative performance of all districts on a unified scale that encourages them to perform better,” the official added. The PGI-D structure includes a total weight of 600 points across 83 indicators, which are grouped into 6 categories: outcomes, effective classroom transactions, infrastructures and student rights, school safety and child protection, digital learning and governance process. These categories are further divided into 12 domains: Learning Outcomes and Quality (LO), Access Outcomes (AO), Teacher Availability and Professional Development Outcomes (TAPDO), Learning Management (LM), Learning Enrichment Activities (LEA), Infrastructure, Facilities, Student Rights (IF&SE) , School Safety and Child Protection (SS&CP), Digital Learning (DL), Fund Convergence and Use (FCV), Improving the Performance of CRCs (CRCP), Attendance Monitoring Systems (AMS) and School Leadership Development (SLD). The PGI-D report assessed 725 districts in 2018-19 and 733 districts in 2019-20 in the United States and UTs. The All India report showed that 33 states and UTs improved their BGA score in 2019-20 compared to the previous year, while Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Punjab and Arunachal Pradesh improved their score by more than 20%.
The only two states namely Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh scored less than 2018-19. The Performance Grading Index (PGI) is a tool to provide insight into the state of school education in states and UTs at the district level, including key levers that drive their performance and critical areas for improvement.
The 12 states and UTs that do not have any district in Ati-uttam and Uttam are Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Goa, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura.
Get all the latest news, breaking news, watch top videos and live TV here.