Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram districts in Kerala emerged as the top-performing districts in school education for the academic year 2020-21. They were closely followed by Kannur and Thrissur districts. The report, known as the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D), provides a comprehensive analysis of the school education system at the district level. In this assessment, the districts’ performance was placed in the “Ati Uttam” category, which is the third-best category of PGI-D. However, none of the districts achieved the highest grades in the “Daksh” and “Utkarsh” categories, according to a report by the Ministry of Education.
Rajasthan leads with the highest number of top-performing districts (26), followed by Gujarat (22) and Punjab (19). All nine districts of Delhi have been classified under the “Ati Uttam” category. The Ministry has recently released the PGI-D report for the years 2020-21 and 2021-22, evaluating 742 districts in the former and 748 districts in the latter across states and Union territories. The PGI-D report assigns districts into 10 grades, with the highest achievable grade being ‘Daksh’ for districts scoring over 90% of the total points, either overall or in their respective categories. The ‘Utkarsh’ category encompasses districts scoring between 81-90%, followed by ‘Ati-Uttam’ (71-80%), ‘Uttam’ (61-70%), ‘Prachesta-I’ (51-60%), ‘Prachesta-II’ (41-50%), and ‘Pracheshta III’ (31-40%). The lowest grade in PGI-D, known as ‘Akanshi-3,’ is assigned to districts with scores up to 10% of the total points, the report mentioned.
The PGI-D helps state education departments identify district-level gaps and improve performance in a decentralized way. The indicator-wise PGI score highlights areas for improvement. In 2021-22, 194 districts showed grade level improvement compared to 2018-19. Among them, seven districts achieved the highest performance with a three-grade jump, 23 districts improved by two grades, and 164 districts improved by one grade, it added.
With inputs from PTI.