Understanding ‘The Performance Grading Index’ for 2020-21 of School Education

In News: Seven States top government index on school education. No State finds a place in the top grade; Ladakh shows the biggest improvement by climbing from Level 10 to Level 4.

The Performance Grading Index of the Ministry of Education classifies States and Union Territories into 10 grades based on their score out of a total 1,000 points. Their performance is assessed on a total of 70 indicators in five domains, which are learning outcome, access, infrastructure and facilities, equity and governance process. The Index is based on data drawn from several data sources, including the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE +) 2020-21, National Achievement Survey NAS 2017, and Mid Day Meal Portal.

What is Performance Grading Index?

The Performance Grading Index (PGI) is a tool to provide insights into the Indian school education system. One of the goals of the PGI is to offer information on the state of school education in States & UTs, including key levels that influence performance and important performance categories. It identifies the gaps and aids States/UTs in prioritising the intervention areas to make sure the school education system is strong at every level. It also intends to encourage States and UTs to implement multifaceted interventions that will result in the highly sought optimal educational results, while also encouraging them to adopt best practises.

What caused these improvements?

Improvement in the Governance process is one of the significant factors contributing to a rise in PGI ratings, according to the domain-specific analysis. There has been a modest improvement in access for major states. Given that the data source is the same—the National Achievement Survey, 2017—the scores in the domains of learning outcomes and quality remained constant. All major states except Tamil Nadu did better at enhancing facilities and infrastructure with Chhattisgarh standing out as the top performer. Very few states improved equity, whiles states like Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Gujarat, Bihar, and Rajasthan showed a decline in equity provisioning.

There are five parameters on which performances are graded – learning outcome, access, equity, infrastructure facilities and governance process.

The PGI report is generated through existing Management Information System platforms such as Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), National Achievement Survey (NAS) and Mid Day Meal (MDM), from where information is gathered.

What is UDISE?

Unified District Information on School Education(UDISE) is one of the largest Management Information Systems on school education.

Report released by Ministry of Education. UDISE was initiated in 2012-13 by the Ministry of Education by integrating DISE for elementary education and SEMIS for secondary education.

Purpose: It helps measure the education parameters from classes 1 to 12 in government and private schools across India.

UDISE+ is an updated and improved version of UDISE. It was developed in the year 2018-19 to speed up data entry, reduce errors, improve data quality and ease its verification.

What is National Achievement Survey?

National Achievement Survey(NAS) is a nationally representative large-scale survey of students’ learning undertaken by the Ministry of Education.

Purpose of the survey: To provide structured feedback on student learning levels at District, State, and national levels. These inputs are used for policy planning and designing pedagogical interventions to improve quality and ensure equity in learning.

The survey covered students of Class 3rd, 5th, 8th and 10th standard. It covered government, government-aided and private schools.

The survey is conducted every three years. The survey was last conducted in 2017 and was scheduled to take place in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 situation, it was postponed.

National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is designed the framework for the survey.

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducted the survey.

Subjects assessed under the survey: The survey was conducted in Language, Mathematics & Environmental Studies for class 3 & 5; Language, Mathematics, Science & Social Science for class 8 and Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Science and English for class 10. The test was conducted in 22 different mediums of instructions.

Besides student achievement tests, pupil questionnaires, teachers questionnaires and school questionnaires were also obtained to understand the various settings and perspectives of students, teachers and schools.