PERFORMANCE GRADE INDEX

1.Why in news?

Kerala, Punjab, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh have emerged as the best performers in school education across indicators such as learning outcomes, equity and infrastructure in the 2020-21 Performing Grade Index (PGI) of the Ministry of School Education

2.Key takeaways

• It assesses states’ performance in school education.
• States are scored on a total of 1,000 points across 70 parameters, which are grouped under five broad categories: access (eg. enrolment ratio, transition rate and retention rate); governance and management; infrastructure; equity (difference in performance between scheduled caste students and general category students) and learning outcomes (average score in mathematics, science, languages and social science).
• States are graded and not ranked to discourage the practice of one improving only at the cost of others, “thereby casting a stigma of underperformance on the latter”.
• According to the government, the objective is to help the states prioritise areas for intervention in school education.
• The Education Ministry released the first PGI in 2019 for the reference year 2017-18.
• The PGI grading system has 10 levels. Level 1 indicates top-notch performance and a score between 951 and 1,000 points. Level II, also known as Grade 1++, indicates a score between 901 and 950. Those with Grade 1+ (or Level III) have scored between 851 and 900. The lowest is Grade VII, and it means a score between 0 and 550 points.
• It sourced data from NAS 2017 and UDISE 2020-21.
• 6 states mentioned above and Chandigarh attain level-2. No state or UT attain level-1. Ladakh has significantly improved its performance in PGI. It has moved from Level 8 to Level 4 in 2020-21.
• The maximum and minimum scores obtained by the states in 2020-21 are 928 (Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab) and 669 (Arunachal Pradesh), respectively.
• Last year(2021), Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the UTs of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Chandigarh were on level-II, for which states/UTs need to score 901 or above out of 1,000. Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh are the new entrants to level-II.