Reports in News: Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D)

Reports in News: Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D). MoE releases report on Performance Grading Index for Districts for the year 2018-19 and 2019-20. The PGI-D report graded 725 districts in 2018-19 and 733 districts in 2019-20 across the states and union territories

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The ministry of education has released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2018-19 and 2019-20 which assesses the performance of the school education system at the district level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis.

Rajasthan’s Sikar 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 have figured in the ‘Utkarsh’ category (scoring 81-90 per cent on a scale of 100).
Also, in the second grade ‘Ati-Uttam’, Rajasthan is significantly ahead of the second and third top states having 24 of its districts in this category.

Performance Grading Index

The Indian school education system is one of the largest in the world with more than 15 lakh schools, nearly 97 lakh teachers and more than 25 crore students from varied socio-economic backgrounds.

The system strives to maintain standards and uniformity across the country while giving ample scope for the country’s diverse culture and heritage to grow and flourish.
The schemes initiated by the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) along with the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, have resulted in significant improvement in accessibility.
As a logical next step, the focus has now shifted from access to quality of education.
DoSEL, therefore, has designed the Performance Grading Index (PGI) to catalyze transformational change in the field of school education.

What is the significance of PGI?

PGI aims to assess the relative performance of all states/UTs in a uniform scale to encourage states/UTs to perform better.
The PGI has been conceptualized as a tool to catalyze transformational change in the field of school education.
It provides insights on the status of school education in states & UTs, including key levels that drive their performance and critical areas of performance.
PGI aims to propel states & UTs towards undertaking multipronged interventions that will bring about the much desired optimal education outcomes.
It also motivates states and UTs to adopt best practices followed by the top performing states.
Based on the success of State PGI and to provide district level measures for effective assessments of educational attainment, DoSEL decided to extend PGI exercise to district level by creating a new PGI for District (PGI-D).
The PGI-D is crafted with a more focused objective of assessing districts on a common parameter with attention now shifting towards outcome measurement of educational policies.

How is the Index prepared?

The PGI-D structure comprises of total weightage of 600 points across 83 indicators, which are grouped under 6 categories:

Outcomes
Effective Classroom Transaction
Infrastructure Facilities and Student’s Entitlements
School Safety and Child Protection
Digital Learning
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 Entitlements (IF&SE)
School Safety and Child Protection (SS&CP)
Digital Learning (DL)
Funds convergence and utilization (FCV)
Enhancing CRCs Performance (CRCP)
Attendance Monitoring Systems (AMS)
School Leadership Development (SLD).

What are the grades?

PGI-D grades the districts into 10 grades with the highest achievable grade being ‘Daksh’, which is for districts scoring more than 90 per cent of the total points in that category or overall.

'Utkarsh’ category is for districts with score between 81-90 per cent followed by ‘Ati-Uttam’ (71-80 per cent), ‘Uttam’ (61-70 per cent), ‘Prachesta-I’ (51-60 per cent), ‘Prachesta-II’ (41-50 per cent) and ‘Pracheshta-III’ (31-40 per cent).
The lowest grade in PGI-D is called ‘Akanshi-3’ which is for scores up to 10 per cent of the total points.

Highlights of the report:

The PGI-D report graded 725 districts in 2018-19 and 733 districts in 2019-20 across the states and UTs.

The all India report showed that 33 states and UTs have improved their PGI score in 2019-20 compared to the previous year with Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Punjab and Arunachal Pradesh have improved their score by more than 20 per cent.

Only two states — Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — have scored less than 2018-19.

States whose districts have performed best in the latest index are Punjab with 14 districts in ‘Ati-Uttam’ grade (scoring 71-80 per cent on a scale of 100) followed by Gujarat and Kerala with each having 13 districts in this category.

On the other hand there are 12 states and Union Territories which don’t have any districts in the ‘Ati-Uttam’ and ‘Uttam’ categories which include seven of the eight states from the northeast region.

None of the districts attained highest grade ‘Daksh’ in both 2019-20 and 2018-19 implying there is ample scope for the districts to further improve their performance in future years.

The Performance Grading Index (PGI) is a tool to provide insights on the status of school education in states and UTs at district level including key levers that drive their performance and critical areas for improvement.

The 12 states and UTs which do not have a single district in the ‘Ati-Uttam’ and ‘Uttam’ are Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar, Goa, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura.

What are the Other Government Initiatives in this Direction?

National Education Policy, 2020: It aims at making “India a global knowledge superpower” by introducing several changes from the school to college level in the Indian education system.

Samagra Shiksha: It is an integrated scheme for school education extending from pre-school to class XII to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels of school education.

PM POSHAN: It provides that every child within the age group of six to fourteen years studying in classes I to VIII who enrolls and attends the school, shall be provided hot cooked nutritional meals, free of charge every day except on school holidays.

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