The government think tank, NITI Aayog, has released the School Education Quality Index (SEQI) which evaluates the performance of states and union territories in the school education sector. With this index, the government identifies the strength and weakness in school education and takes required correction measures like policy interventions to rectify them.Kerala has emerged on top among 20 large states in terms of quality of school education, followed by Rajasthan and Karnataka, while the most-populous Uttar Pradesh was ranked at the bottom position during 2016-17.
For ease in comparability, the states have been categorized as small and large states. The union territories have been categorized separately.
As per the report released by the NITI Aayog, among 20 large states in the country 18 have improved their overall performance between 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, which is otherwise referred to as the incremental performance in the report. The highest incremental performance has been recorded in Kerala. As against 77.6% score in 2015-2016, the state has recorded 82.2% in 2016-2017.
Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh have improved their performances in school education sector.
NITI Aayog's school education report has considered 2015-2016 as the base year and 2016-2017 as the reference year.
Among all the improving states, Rajasthan has made a quantum jump in the education sector by scoring more than eight percentage points than its previous score. Other states like Haryana, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha have improved their ranking as well.
The overall performance has declined in Karnataka and Uttarakhand.
All seven union territories have shown an improvement in their overall performance scores.
Among the small states the overall performance has increased in five states-- Tripura, Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland. The performance and ranks have decreased in Mizoram, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
In the launch event, Amitabh Kant CEO NITI Aayog, Dr Rajiv Kumar Vice Chairman NITI Aayog, Rina Ray Secretary Higher Education were present along with other dignitaries.
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