Education equity is one of the least improved upon areas in most of the Indian states, says a government report. The indicators for the education equity index, that were adopted for the report, are the performance difference between students of reserved categories and general categories, between rural and urban students, between male and female students, enrolment of children with special needs, etc.
The Performance Grading Index (PGI) report has been released by the Ministry of Human Resources Development. This is the second such report to have been released by the Ministry. The first report was released in 2019 for 2016-2017 reference year. The PGI was designed to catalyse transformational change in the field of school education. The PGI 2018-2019 report has been based on the data available in Shagun and the National Achievement Survey-2017.
MHRD has released Performance Grading Index (PGI) report.
"Grading, in an ideal situation, allows all the States and UTs to be construed as star performers and be at Level I which is the goal that the PGI hopes to achieve," the report says.
While many states have improved in the infrastructure and governance domain, a total of 15 states show higher reductions in the equity grade and the report says in many of the states education equity was the least improved domain in the reference year.
The states have been given grade in the PGI report on the basis of four domains-- access, infrastructure and facilities, equity and governance processes-- and on 1,000 grade points.
The first two cohorts of grades-951 to 1000 and 901-950-remain vacant. None of the states could qualify to be in the first cohorts.
In the third cohort, three states-Chandigarh, Gujarat and Kerala-have been placed. These three states are the first grade states of the country in terms of education performance, as per the report.
In the last year's report, the opening grade was the fourth cohort of grading and three states were placed there.
North eastern states have not fared well in the grading assessment. Sikkim has been graded higher than all the north eastern states and has bagged a spot higher than Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Manipur have been ranked the lowest.
Only state, Chhattisgarh has maintained its last year's score.
Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have improved their scores.
Click here for more Education News
