What’s in the news?

• The Ministry of Education has released its Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2019.
• The Index studied 83 indicators grouped in six categories. These categories are outcomes, effective classroom transaction, infrastructure facilities and student’s entitlements, school safety and child protection, digital learning and governance process.

Highlights of the Report

• Rajasthan’s Sikar is the top performer followed by Jhunjhunu and Jaipur in the index for performance of the school education system at the district level.
• The three districts have figured in the ‘Utkarsh’ category (scoring 81-90% on a scale of 100) with Junjhunu scoring the maximum (236 out of 290) in learning outcomes.
• Also, in the second grade ‘Ati-uttam’, Rajasthan is significantly ahead of the second and third top States with 24 of its districts in this category.
• PGI-D grades the districts into 10 grades with the highest achievable grade being ‘Daksh’, which is for districts scoring more than 90% of the total points in that category or overall.
• ‘Utkarsh’ category is for districts with scores between 81-90% followed by ‘Ati-Uttam’ (71-80%), ‘Uttam’ (61-70%), ‘Prachesta-I’ (51-60%), ‘Prachesta-II’ (41-50%) and ‘Pracheshta III’ (31-40%).
• The lowest grade in PGI-D is called ‘Akanshi-3’ which is for scores up to 10% of the total points.
• The other States whose districts have performed best in the latest index are Punjab with 14 districts in ‘Ati-uttam’ grade (scoring 71-80% on a scale of 100) followed by Gujarat and Kerala with each having 13 districts in this category.
• However, there are 12 States and Union Territories which don’t have even a single district in the Ati-uttam and Uttam categories and these include seven of the eight States from the northeast region.
• The report states that since none of the States have districts in the top category there was a need for further improvement in the years to come. 
• Overall, eight districts improved their PGI score by more than 20% and 14 districts improved their PGI score by more than 10 %. Another 423 districts made less than 10% improvement in PGI scores, but remained in the same grade in 2019-20.

Reference

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/rajasthans-sikar-highest-performing-district-in-school-education-across-india/article65573881.ece