SHILLONG, Nov 5: Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui on Saturday said he does not look at scores or the Performance Grade Index (PGI) but at grey areas that need attention.
He said the state government is working on improving the education sector.
“I don’t look at scores but areas where we are lagging behind and how we can improve,” Rymbui told reporters while talking about the latest PGI of the Ministry of Education.
He said the increase in the number of state-run schools from 584 in 2017-18 to 716 this year itself is an improvement. He said the government is trying to identify the grey areas to work on them and improve which resulted in a slight improvement.
Meghalaya made a small improvement in the latest PGI. Ranked at the bottom of the list of states last year, it secured the second lowest position this year.
The worst performer was Arunachal Pradesh, while Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab topped the PGI that assesses school education at the district-level.
With 669 points, Arunachal achieved the L7 level, the lowest in the index, while Manipur, Nagaland, and Uttarakhand joined Meghalaya at the L6 level with scores between 701 and 750 points.
Meghalaya improved its points from 649 last year to 716 this year. Assam (848 points), Tripura (834), Mizoram (765), Sikkim (751), Manipur (741), and Nagaland (728), fared better than Meghalaya in the rankings.
The ministry’s Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L) had devised PGI for the states and the UTs to provide insights and data-driven mechanisms on the performance and achievements of school education.
The prime objective of PGI is to promote evidence-based policymaking and highlight course correction to ensure quality education for all. So far, DoSE&L has released the PGI report for the year 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20.
The present report is for the year 2020-21.
The exercise, which is the first of its kind at such a scale, envisages that the Index will propel the states and the UTs towards undertaking multi-pronged interventions that will bring about the much-desired optimal education outcomes.
