Performance Grading Index

8th July, 2023 Social Issues

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Context

- Ministry of Education released a report on Performance Grading Index 2.0 for States/UTs for the year 2021-22.

Performance Grading Index

About

The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socio-economic backgrounds.
The Performance Grading Index (PGI) is a tool to provide insights on the status of school education in States and UTs including key levers that drive their performance and critical areas for improvement.

Design

Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) has designed the PGI to catalyse transformational change in the field of school education.

Objective

The prime objective of PGI is to promote evidence-based policy making and highlight course correction to ensure quality education for all.

Methodology

The PGI evaluation classifies States and UTs into grade/ levels, as opposed to ranking.
Grading allows several States and UTs to be considered at the same level, eliminates the phenomenon of one improving only at the cost of others, thereby casting a stigma of underperformance on the latter, though, in effect they may have maintained status quo or even performed better than earlier.

Categories and Domains

The PGI is structured in two categories, namely, Outcomes, and Governance & Management and comprises 70 indicators
These categories are further divided into 5 domains, viz.,

1. Learning Outcomes (LO),
2. Access (A),
3. Infrastructure & Facilities (IF),
4. Equity (E) and
5. Governance Process (GP).

The points assigned to indicators are either 10 or 20, whereas points assigned to each Domain ranges from 80 to 360.
The States and UTs have been assessed on the basis of their performance against the benchmark for each indicator.
Following the same approach of State PGI in the previous years, States/ UTs are graded.

Information on the indicators

The information on the indicators are drawn from data available with the DoSEL from the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), National Achievement Survey (NAS) of NCERT, Mid Day Meal website, Public Financial Management System (PFMS) and the information uploaded by the States and UTs on the Shagun portal of DoSEL.

Performance

The highest achievable stage in PGI is Level I, which is for scores 951-1000.
In between, an equal width of 50 points has been kept for each Level.
In the PGI, Level II means PGI score 901-950, Level III: 851-900, Level IV: 801-850, and so on up to Level IX: 551-600. The last one, namely Level X is for scores 0-550.
Thus, the grading categories are relative and can change depending upon the best performers in a given year. At the same time, all 36 States and UTs can occupy the highest grade simultaneously.

Change in 2021-22 PGI Structure

Over the period, many of the indicators in PGI – States/UTs have been outlived and become redundant. Also, the structure of PGI – States/UTs has been heavily tilted towards the indicators related to Governance Processes rather than the quality indicators. Therefore, the PGI – State structure for 2021-22 has been revised and renamed as PGI 2.0.
In PGI 2.0, the data source for many of the indicators has been the data from UDISE+ and the grades have been aligned with the PGI - District to have uniformity and better comparability.

Reasons behind launching PGI 2.0

- To have more updated base with quality indicators
- To align with new initiatives of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
- To monitor indicators relating to Goal 4 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and
- To replace existing indicators which have achieved optimal target.

Indicators in PGI 2.0

The new PGI structure covers 73 indicators, focused more on qualitative assessment besides including digital initiatives and teacher education.
The grades/level obtained by States/UTs in previous edition of the PGIs are thus not comparable as with the grades/levels obtained by States/UTs in this new edition.

New Structure

The PGI 2.0 structure comprises of 1000 points across 73 indicators grouped into 2 categories, Outcomes, Governance Management (GM).
These categories are further divided into 6 domains, viz.,

Grades

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.

Significance

The ultimate 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.
Indicators of PGI 2.0 have been aligned to policy initiatives and interventions introduced post-implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 for proper tracking of the progress.
The PGI 2.0 is expected to help States and UTs to pinpoint the gaps and accordingly prioritize areas for intervention to ensure that the school education system is robust at every level.

Findings of PGI 2021-22

Apart from Punjaband Chandigarh, the top performing states and union territories are Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu. All of these states were put into the 641 – 700 point category.
Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram emerged as the worst-performing states in the PGI report. All three states were put in the 401 - 460 point category.
Delhi was the only state or union territory to get into the highest category for any domain. Delhi was in the top category (941 - 1000) for both access and equity.

Here are the top 10 best performing states according to PGI 2021-22.