India needs to get its act together and do something about the education system so that schools can get back on track. There was a recently passed Performance Grading Index (PGI) which ideally evaluates the performance of states and Union Territories on the basis of the facilities and the state of education in schools, has not produced many surprises. The states that usually have a good running and lead of good education and high ranking students have kept their places with very little change. Most states were a basic work in progress have also upped their games and made improvements in their ranks. There were however some states that had made very little progress or even no progress at all which was sad to see. The index has seven levels of performance, and Karnataka has moved up from Level 5 to Level 4. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have gone backward from their previous year’s positions. The index is based on 70 parameters relating to access, equity, governance processes, infrastructure and facilities, and learning outcomes.
This index was introduced by the education department in 2019 using the year 2017 and 2018 as the reference years to monitor the quality of school education across the nation this was also used set a sense of competition among the states. An analysis of the performance of the states shows that most of the weaknesses are related to governance and management. But states also have their own difficulties which are special to them, and so the performance on various parameters differs from state to state. While Karnataka has performed well in learning outcomes and on parameters relating to equity, infrastructure and access, it has not scored well on governance. The report has said the state government has not released funds to schools for various activities promptly and in time. Generally, as in the case of many other social indices, southern and western states did better than those in the north and the east.
There were reports on this that stated the index measures the shortfalls objectively and regularly and thus helps states to take effective action to address the shortcomings. The improvements are also graded. It is important that states take the report seriously and make improvements in areas where they lag. Considering the importance of school education and its poor state, the improvements made by the states are not enough.
