Ministry of Education releases combined report on Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for the year 2020-21 & 2021-22

Source: The post is based on the article “Ministry of Education releases combined report on Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for the year 2020-21 & 2021-22” published in PIB on 9th July 2023

What is the News?

The Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Education has released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) combined report for 2020-21 and 2021-22.

What is the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D)?

Aim: To assess the performance of the school education system at the District level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis.

Methodology: PGI-D structure comprises of total weight age of 600 points across 83 indicators, which are grouped under 6 categories viz., Outcomes, Effective Classroom Transaction, Infrastructure Facilities & Student’s Entitlements, School Safety & Child Protection, Digital Learning and Governance Process. 

– These categories are further divided into 12  domains such as Learning Outcomes and Quality (LO), Access Outcomes (AO), Teacher Availability, Learning Management (LM), Infrastructure, Facilities, school Safety and Child Protection (SS&CP), Digital Learning (DL) among others.

Categories: PGI-D has 10 grades under which districts are categorized 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 grade is Akanshi-3, for districts that score less than 10%.

Significance: PGI-D is expected to help the state education departments to identify gaps at the district level and improve their performance in a decentralized manner.

What are the key findings of PGI-D 2020-21 and 2021-22?

Source: The Hindu

There are no districts in the country figuring in the top two grades — “Daksh” and “Utkarsh” in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 index.

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

Among the best-performing districts in 2020-21, the maximum are from Rajasthan (26) followed by Gujarat (22) and Punjab (19).All nine districts of Delhi have figured in the “Ati Uttam” category.

In the digital learning domain during 2021-22, the majority of districts are still in the bottom three grades indicating the need for boosting the digital learning aspect.