Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ releases Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2019-20 for States and Union Territories
- The 2021 Performance Grading Index (PGI) was released by Union Education Minister, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ on June 06, 2021.
- The PGI index measure the performance of states in school education, based on data drawn from several sources, like Unified District Information System for Education Plus, National Achievement Survey, and Mid-Day Meal.
- 2021 PGI is the third edition of the PGI Index and has considered 2019-20 as reference year. The first PGI for States and Union Territories was published in 2019 with reference year 2017-18
- States are scored on a total of 1,000 points across 70 parameters.
- These parameters are grouped under five broad categories
- Access (eg. enrolment ratio, transition rate and retention rate);
- Governance and management;
- Infrastructure;
- Equity (difference in performance between scheduled caste students and general category students) and
- Learning outcomes (average score in mathematics, science, languages and social science).
- In PGI Index, states are graded and not ranked so as to discourage the practice of one state improving only at the cost of other state.
- There are 10 levels in PGI grading system. Level I (951-1000) is the highest grade while Level X, also known as Grade VII (0-550) is the lowest grade.
- In 2021 PGI, none of the state or Union Territory could achieve the highest grade, that is Level I.
- Chandigarh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar and Kerala have obtained Grade 1++ (or Level II), which makes them the best performing states.
- Ladakh has obtained the lowest grade, Grade VII.
