The Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 for 2021-22 report released on July 7 is the latest report in this series that commenced in 2017 as an annual tracker of the country’s progress towards SDG4 in school education. The surprise finding is that no state or UT features in the top four grade bands on a scale of 1000 and even the best performing two states of Punjab and Chandigarh only made it to the score of 641-700.
As these results are for year 2021-22, one of the Covid19 pandemic impact years, the lower performance could well be a result of the learning loss that happened due long school closures. At the same time, education departments and administrators all across India must realize that they have a long distance to travel to achieve equitable and quality education.
The PGI 2.0 structure as a departure from the past comprises of 1000 points across 73 indicators grouped into 2 categories viz., Outcomes, Governance Management (GM) and have been aligned to policy initiatives and interventions introduced post implementation of National Education policy (NEP) 2020 for proper tracking the progress. These categories are further divided into 6 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), Infrastructure & Facilities (IF), Equity (E), Governance Process (GP) & Teachers Education and Training (TE&T).
The PGI 2.0 is completely aligned with Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE +), National Achievement Survey (NAS), PM POSHAN portal, PRABAND portal and Vidyanjali Portal data which now enables automatically to fill values of 69 indicators directly from UDISE+/NAS report. As such now data for only 4 indicators has been filled up by states & UTS.
Out of these 69 indicators the States/UTs can now focus on verification of values and fill the data in respect of only 4 indicators as against 70 indicators in the previous PGI. For PGI 2.0 report 2021-22, UDISE+ 2021-22 data and NAS 2021 data have been used. 2.2. For 20 indicators related to Learning Outcomes domain and Equity domain, data is drawn from NAS 2021. Similarly, for 7 indicators of Access domain, 13 indicators of Infrastructure and Facilities domain, 8 indicators of Equity domain, 8 indicators of Governance Processes and 8 indicators from Teachers Training domain data is drawn from UDISE Plus report 2021-22. For the other 2 indicators of Infrastructure & Facilities domain, PM POSHAN data is used, for 3 indicators of Governance Processes domain data is used from Vidyanjali and PRABHAND portal. However, for the remaining 4 indicators data has been filled up by respective State/UT MIS
PGI 2.0 for 2021-22 classified the States/UTs into ten grades viz., highest achievable Grade is Daksh, which is for State/UT scoring more than 940 points out of total of 1000 points. The lowest grade is Akanshi-3 which is for score up to 460. The eight other grades are: Utkarsh (881-940), Atti-Uttam (821-880), Uttam (761-820), Prachesta-1 (701-760), Prachesta-2 (641-700), Prachesta -3 (581-640), Akanshi-1 (521-580), Akanshi-2 (461-520). The indicator-wise PGI 2.0 score shows the areas where a State/UT needs to improve.
As per the results shown in the index only 2 States and UTs, namely Punjab and Chandigarh have attained Grade Prachesta -2 (score 641-700), 6 States/UTs joined Grade Prachesta – 3 (score 581- 640), 13 States/UTs joined grade Akanshi -1 (score 521-580), 12 States/UTs in grade Akanshi – 2 (score 461-520), and 3 States in grade Akanshi – 3.
The stated aim of PGI 2.0 is to propel States & UTs towards undertaking multi-pronged interventions that will bring about the much-desired optimal education outcomes covering all dimensions. And to this end, all stakeholders in school education need to get down to more work and learn from best practices, innovation, and resource mobilization and uplift the overall performance as schools of the country have a bigger national role in achieving the ambition of being a superpower for India.
