Govt of India releases report on Performance Grading Index 2.0 for States/UTs for the year 2021-22

The global education development agenda reflected in the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) adopted by India in 2015 seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030. Such a goal will require proper assessment and monitoring of indicators set out in goals so that all of the critical targets of Sustainable Development can be achieved by 2030.

In the existing PGI of 70 indicators many of the indicators were filled by States/UTs often putting up additional burden on States/UTs and one of the factors affecting the timely release of report. Therefore, a need was felt to make PGI more dynamic, up to date, and reflect the true performance of the States/UTs, indicators of PGI have undergone transformational changes in 2021-22 and renamed as PGI-2.0.

PGI 2.0 aims to propel States & UTs towards undertaking multi-pronged interventions to achieve optimal education outcomes in terms of improving quality and also to motivate States and UTs to adopt best practices followed by the top performing States/UTs which can be replicated wherever possible in shortest possible time. To give emphasis to teacher education in school education, a separate category and domain on Teacher Education & Training (TET) is now added in PGI 2.0.

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. The PGI – States/UTs was first released for the year 2017-18 and so far, has been released up to the year 2020-21.

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, 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, 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.

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.

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).

In PGI 2.0, the nomenclature for PGI scores is classified into various grades. To have a representative grade, the least score obtained by State/UT was taken as the starting point and then deducted from total score to get the grade range (i.e., 1000- least score of state). The resultant value was then divided into 10 equal class intervals to get grade range. For instance, the least score scored in PGI 2.0 is 420, hence 1000-420 = 580, now dividing 580 into 10 equal parts we get 58(rounded off to 60), which is the difference to be taken between two grades. Now starting from 400 (since the least value scored is 420) we will divide our grades with a gap of intervals of 60. The highest achievable Grade is called Daksh, which is for State/UT scoring more than 90% of the grade range. 

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.  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 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.

PGI 2.0 scores and grades achieved by States/UTs in 2021-22 bear a testimony to the efficacy of the PGI system. The indicator-wise PGI 2.0 score shows the areas where a State/UT needs to improve.

PGI 2.0 report for 2021-22 can be accessed at HERE