Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Jaipur of Rajasthan have come out with flying colours in the latest district-wise ranking of school education released by the central government on Monday. These are the only districts in the country to have secured a place in the second-highest “Utkarsh” category in the 2019-20 index.
The Department of School Education and Literacy, under the Ministry of Education, released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2018-19 and 2019-20, which assesses the performance of the school education system at the district level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis.
Districts scoring more than 90 per cent are categorised as “Daksh”. “Utkarsh” is the second-highest-ranking scoring 81 to 90 per cent, followed by “Ati Uttam” (71 to 80 per cent), “Uttam” (61 to 70 per cent), Prachesta-1 (51 to 60 per cent), Prachesta-2 (41 to 50 per cent), Prachesta-3 (31 to 40 per cent), Akanshi-1 (21 to 30 per cent) and Akanshi-2 (11 to 2p per cent).
According to the grading index, no district could make it into the highest “Daksh” grade. The three Rajasthan districts are the first to become “Utkarsh” in the ranking system introduced recently.
Among the southern states, only three districts of Karnataka – Chitradurga, Belagavi and Dharwad – got the “Ati Uttam” score.
In Kerala, all the districts barring Idukki are in the “Ati Uttam” category.
Only two districts in Tamil Nadu – Dharmapuri and Villupuram – have got the “Ati Uttam” category.
The number of districts in the third-highest “Ati Uttam” category has almost doubled from 49 in 2018-19 to 86 in 2019-20. A marginal rise was seen in the fourth-highest “Uttam” category with 276 districts compared to 267 in the earlier edition.
The other rankings include “Pracheshta 1-2 and 3” following Akanshi -1 and Akanshi-2.
The only district in the lowest Akanshi-2 category is Shi Yomi of Arunachal Pradesh.
The Performance Grading Index (PGI) for 2019-20 covers 733 districts against 725 in 2018-19.
Apart from the overall performance, the districts are also judged on sub-categories like outcomes, effective classroom transactions, infrastructure, school safety and child protection, digital learning and governance processes.
The performance index claimed that eight districts have improved their PGI score by more than 20 per cent from 2018-19 and 14 districts bettered by 10 per cent. More than 400 districts made less than 10 per cent improvement.
The objective of PGI-D is to help the districts to prioritise areas for intervention in school education and thus improve to reach the highest grade.
