New Delhi: Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram were among the top-performing districts in school education during 2020-21 followed by Kannur and Thrissur, according to a Ministry of Education's report on Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D).
The report released on Sunday assesses the performance of school education system at the district level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis.
The performance of the four districts in Kerala has been graded under the "Ati Uttam" category, which is the third best category of PGI-D. None of the districts have figured in the two categories with highest grades -- "Daksh" and "Utkarsh".
Among the best-performing districts, maximum are from Rajasthan (26) followed by Gujarat (22) and Punjab (19). All nine districts of Delhi have figured in the "Ati Uttam" category.
The ministry released the PGI-D for 2020-21 and 2021-22. The PGI-D report graded 742 districts during 2020-21 and 748 districts during 2021-22 across the states and Union territories.
The grades
PGI-D grades the districts into 10 grades with the highest achievable grade being 'Daksh', which is for districts scoring more than 90 per cent of the total points in that category or overall.
Utkarsh' category is for districts with score between 81-90 per cent followed by Ati-Uttam' (71-80 per cent), Uttam' (61-70 per cent), Prachesta-I' (51-60 per cent), Prachesta-II' (41-50 per cent) and Pracheshta III' (31-40 per cent). The lowest grade in PGI-D is called 'Akanshi-3' which is for scores up to 10 per cent of the total points.
"The PGI-D is expected to help the state education departments to identify gaps at the district level and improve their performance in a decentralized manner. The indicator-wise PGI score shows the areas where a district needs to improve," a senior MoE official said.
Assessment parameters
The PGI-D structure comprises total weightage of 600 points across 83 indicators, which are grouped under six categories -- Outcomes, Effective Classroom Transaction, Infrastructure Facilities & Student's Entitlements, School Safety & Child Protection, Digital Learning and Governance Process.
These categories are further divided into 12 domains -- Learning Outcomes and Quality; Access Outcomes; Teacher Availability and Professional Development Outcomes; Learning Management; Learning Enrichment Activities; Infrastructure, Facilities and Student Entitlements; School Safety and Child Protection; Digital Learning; Funds Convergence and Utilization; Enhancing CRCs Performance; Attendance Monitoring Systems; and School Leadership Development.
Standards plunged during Covid pandemic
The performance of districts in school education saw a significant drop during the Covid pandemic, with none of the districts figuring in the top two categories in the Ministry of Education's Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2020-21 and 2021-22.
Punjab with 18 districts in "Ati-Uttam" category (the third grade out of total 10), in 2021-22 has outperformed Rajasthan whose number of districts in this category came down to five from 26 in 2020-21. Punjab too has one less district in this category compared to 2020-21.