There is some good news in the education ministry’s performance grading index 2.0. The gap in educational achievement of government schools of the higher achieving and bottom ranking states and Union territories has improved between 2017-18 and 2023-24 from 51% to 42%. This is a noticeable improvement. But unfortunately, no state or UT has achieved any of the top four grades — Daksh, Utkarsh, Uttam and Ati Uttam. They have all remained stuck in the three Pracheshta and three Akanshi levels. Even here, Chandigarh, with the maximum score out of 1000, is the only state to enter the Pracheshta I band. It has moved up from Pracheshta II. The PGI tests schools across six domains: learning outcomes, access, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance processes and teacher training. Kerala is the only state to attain Daksh in teacher education and training but has not done well in the other indicators. It is one of the middling states because the lowest ranking five are Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland and Bihar. The high scoring ones are Chandigarh, Punjab, Delhi, Gujarat and Odisha. Odisha has done remarkably well in equity by bridging caste, gender and regional gaps. Among the parameters considered by the PGI, learning outcomes, arguably, present the stiffest challenge to states and UTs. The Annual Status of Education Report 2024 had pointed out severe deficiencies in this domain.
There are some states — Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu — that have fallen in achievement levels. The situation of schools in Bengal, with its sudden shortage of teachers and instability, may be part reason for this fall. Others show a significant rise in achievement between 2018 and 2024 — Himachal Pradesh, up 41 points, Telangana, Chandigarh, Odisha and Goa. Bihar is still struggling with infrastructure and is in Akanshi II. Meghalaya alone is in Akanshi III, the lowest grade. The grading and the domains are extremely useful because they bring out the strengths and the weaknesses of the school systems in states and UTs. The education minister has laid the improvement at the door of the National Education Policy 2020. Certainly the detailed marking, made possible by deriving data from agencies such as the Unified District Information System for Education Plus, provides the evidence based on which states may pay special attention to their weaknesses. What is clear, however, is that in spite of the closing gap, government schools throughout the country need systemic changes for any of them to reach the grades of excellence. This should now be the target of all states and UTs.