Ministry of Education releases first report on Performance Grading Index for District for the year 2018-19 and 2019-20
Recently, the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education released the Center's
first Performance Grading Index for Districts-PGI-D for the years 2018- 19 and for the year 2019-20.
In June 2021, the Union Education Minister has approved the release of Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2019-20 for the states and union territories.
Highlights of the report
1. Best Performer
Three districts of Rajasthan performed best in the evaluation. As per the report, three districts-n Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Jaipur were placed in the 'Utkarsh' grade in the year 2019-20, whereas a year ago no district came under that category. Rajasthan has the
highest number of districts in this grade at 24, followed by Punjab (14), Gujarat (13), and Kerala (13).
2. Worst Performer
The districts with the lowest scores (1 out of 50) were in this category, South Salmara-Mankachar (Assam),
Alirajpur (Madhya Pradesh), North Garo Hills and South Garo Hills in Meghalaya, and Khowai (Tripura) in
the year 2020. The 12 states/UTs that do not have a single district in ‘Ati Uttam’ and ‘Uttam’ are: Bihar,
Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur,
Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand.
Progress
As per the report, there has been an increase in the number of districts across all categories. The number of districts in the very best grade increased from 49 to 86 during 2018-19 to 2019-20, showing "significant improvement".
33 districts improved their scores in the results, but there was no improvement in grade-level. The results category includes learning outcomes of students, availability of teachers, and professional outcomes.
Performance Grading Index-District
(PGI-D)
The PGI-D assesses the performance of the school education system at the district level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis. PGI-D assesses district level performance in school education based on data collected from various sources including Integrated District Information System on Education
Plus (UDISE+), National Achievement Survey (NAS), 2017 and data provided by respective districts.
Structure
The PGI-D structure comprises a total of 600 points across 83 indicators, grouped under six categories. In the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, two categories of digital learning and effective classroom have been added. However, these categories were
not part of the state level PGI.
These categories are further
divided into 12 domains.
The PGI-D classifies districts into 10 grades. The highest grade is 'Daksh', for districts scoring more
than 90% of the aggregate marks in that category or overall. This is followed by Utkarsh (81% to 90%),
Ati Uttam (71% to 80%), Uttam (61% to 70%), Pracheta-1 (51% to 60%) and Pracheta-2 (41% to 50%).
The lowest grade in PGI-D is 'Akanshi-3' for a score of up to 10% of the total marks. In these two.years, neither district has come up with the highest 'Daksh' grade.