Performance Grading Index 2.0 (PGI 2.0)

Overview

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

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.
Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, devised Performance Grading Index (PGI) for States and UTs which assesses the performance of school education system at the State/UT level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis.
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.
The PGI – State structure for 2021-22 has been revised and renamed as PGI 2.0.

To propel States & UTs towards undertaking multi-pronged interventions that will bring about the much-desired optimal education
Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

outcomes covering all dimensions.
The PGI 2.0 structure comprises of 1000 points across 73 indicators grouped into 2 categories viz., Outcomes, Governance Management (GM).
These categories are further divided into 6 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), Infrastructure & Facilities (IF), Equity (E), Governance Process (GP) & Teachers Education and Training (TE&T).
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.
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 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.
The indicator-wise PGI 2.0 score shows the areas where a State/UT needs to improve.

None of the states/UTs has attained the highest grade, Daksh.
For learning outcomes, one of the key indicators of good performance, the top performers are Punjab, Chandigarh and Rajasthan while no states/ UTs could achieve the top grade for teacher education and training.
In 2019-20, Punjab, Chandigarh, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Kerala topped the index, while the index during the Covid period (2020-21) recorded Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab as the best performing states.
Punjab and Chandigarh find place in the sixth grade (Prachesta- 2) while six states could make it to the seventh grade (Prachesta-3).
The three poorest performing states/UTs are Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram.
Highlighting the inter-state disparity, the maximum and minimum scores obtained by states/ UTs in 2021-22 are 659.01 and 420.64 respectively.
The deviation of 23.8% indicates that states like Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram have to put more effort to reach the top slot.
This disparity was 51% in 2017-18 indicating that PGI also helped bridge the performance gap among states/UTs over the years.

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