Context: Recently, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) as a combined report for 2020-21 and 2021-22 which assesses the performance of school education system at the district level.

About Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D)

• Objective: PGI-D is to help the districts to priorities areas for intervention in school education and thus improve to reach the highest grade.

• The PGI-D structure has a total weightage of 600 points comprising 83 indicators.

These 83 indicators are divided under six categories namely –

• Outcomes;

• Effective Classroom Transaction;

• Infrastructure Facilities and Student’s Entitlements;

• School Safety and Child Protection;

• Digital Learning; and Governance Process.

These categories are further divided into 12 domains - learning outcomes and quality; access outcome, teacher availability and professional development outcomes; learning management; learning enrichment activities; infrastructure; facilities; student entitlement; school safety and child protection; digital learning; funds convergence and utilisation; attendance monitoring systems; and school leadership development.

Highlights of the Report

• The pandemic led to a decline in educational performance of many districts in the country, reveals a report from the Ministry of Education (MoE).

The report has been divided into 10 grades under which districts are categorised, with

• ‘Daksh’ being the highest grade (above 90%), followed by Utkarsh (81%-90%); Ati-Uttam (71%-80%);

• Uttam (61%-70%); Prachesta-1 (51%-60%); Prachesta-2 (41%-50%); Prachesta-3 (31%-40%);

• Akanshi-1 (21% to 30%); and Akanshi-2 (11% to 20%).

• The lowest performance grade is Akanshi-3, for districts that score less than 10%.

• Performance of States: While none of the districts were able to earn the top two grades — Daksh and Utkarsh.

• About 121 districts were graded as Ati-Uttam for 2020-21, though this number fell by more than half in 2021-22, with just 51 districts making the grade.

• Further attesting to the pandemic effect, while 2020-21 had 86 districts under Prachesta-2 (sixth-highest grade), this number rose to 117 in 2021-22.

District-wise performance

• Among districts graded as ‘Ati-Uttam’ for 2020-22 were Krishna and Guntur in Andhra Pradesh; Chandigarh; Dadra Nagar Haveli; several districts in Delhi, Karnataka, and Kerala; Jagatsinghpur, Cuttack, Bharat, Ganjam, Puri, and Khurdha in Odisha; Siddipet in Telangana; Valsad, Junagadh and Sabar Kantha in Gujarat, etc.

• In 2021-22, Chandigarh retained its ‘Ati-Uttam status’, so did some districts in Delhi and Gujarat.

Significance

• The report is expected to help State education departments identify gaps at the district level and improve their performance in a decentralised manner.

• There are indicator-wise PGI scores that show the areas where a district needs to improve.