By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, July 8: In another abysmal performance in terms of education, Meghalaya was placed at the bottom in the Ministry of Education’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) for 2021-22.
Other two Northeastern states to join Meghalaya were Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh — they were together adjudged the three poorest performing States/UTs (Akanshi – 3 grade for score up to 460).
Meghalaya scored 420.6, while Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh scored 453.4 and 458.5 respectively.
Chandigarh and Punjab were the best performers in school education.
The latest report stated Punjab and Chandigarh as the top two state and Union Territory and fall in the sixth grade — Prachesta 2 (score 641-700).
Six states and UTs joined grade Prachesta – 3 (score 581- 640).
“The States and Union Territories which are in grade Prachesta-2 as per evaluation this year, still have considerable ground to cover to reach the maximum aggregated 1,000 points,” the report stated.
Meghalaya has been ranked poorly for multiple years drawing criticisms and sparking debates in the state.
The PGI looks at the Indian education system as one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socioeconomic backgrounds.
The report, highlighting the inter-state disparity, noted that the maximum and minimum scores obtained by the states and Union Territories in 2021-22 are 659.01 and 420.64 respectively.
“The deviation between the maximum and minimum scores obtained by states and Union Territories is 238.37 or 23.8 per cent of the maximum points, indicating that, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram have to put more effort to reach the top slot,” it said.
“This disparity was 51 per cent in 2017-18 indicating that, PGI also helped to bridge the performance gap amongst states and Union Territories over the years which may be due to efforts of the government such as Look East policy,” it added.
The previous report’s joint top-performing states — Kerala and Maharashtra — are among the six second-best performing states and Union Territories in the grading this time.
The Ministry of Education assesses the performance of the school education system at the state and Union Territory levels by creating an index for comprehensive analysis. The Performance Grading Index – 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,” a senior official in the Education Ministry said.
“Therefore, to have a 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 the optimal target, the PGI – State structure for 2021-22 has been revised and renamed as PGI 2.0,” the official added.
The report revealed that PGI, which grades states and UTs in 10 grades, none could manage the requisite score to be in the top five grades.
In 2019-20, Punjab, Chandigarh, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Kerala topped the index. During Covid, Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab were the best-performing states. (With PTI inputs)