According to the Ministry of School Education’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2020-21 released on Thursday, Nagaland attained Level VI with a score of 728 out of 1000, a level upgrade from Level 7 in 2019-20 with a score of 667.
The Performance Grading Index is a new index that measures the performance of states and union territories on a uniform scale in order to catalyze transformational change in the field of school education.
The PGI structure includes a total weightage of 1000 points across 70 indicators divided into two categories: outcome, and governance and management. These categories are subdivided further into five domains: Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), Infrastructure & Facilities (IF), Equity (E), and Governance Process (GP).
Learning Outcome and Quality: In this domain, Nagaland scored 126 points out of a possible 180, which has remained consistent since the 2017-18 report, indicating that there has been no change in Learning Outcome and Quality in Nagaland over the last five years.
Access Domain: One of the primary goals of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the Sustainable Development Goal is to reduce dropout rates and ensure universal access to education at all levels by 2030.
Enrollment, retention of students, out of total students show many students make transition to higher class / levels, and identifying and mainstreaming of out of school children are some of the important indicators through which Access domain performance is measured in PGI.
Here, Nagaland received a score of 55 out of 80 in this category which is an improvement when compared to 43 in 2017-18 but negligible changes as compared to 53 in 2019-20.
Infrastructure & Facilities Domain: This domain measures indicators such as the availability of ICT facilities, the timely availability of textbooks and uniforms, all of which are critical inputs for improving student performance. Nagaland received a total score of 117 out of 150, a significant improvement from 63 in 2017-18, and 117 in 2019-20.
Equity Domain: Nagaland received 210 out of 230 points for ensuring that education benefits every child in India and that no child is denied the opportunity to learn and excel due to circumstances of birth or background. Although the change was minor, it represented a slight decrease from 213 in 2019-20.
Governance Process Domain: The concept of minimal government and maximum governance aims to reform the government structure and make it more accountable and transparent. In this endeavor, the Governance Process domain aims to capture the performance of all States/UTs using indicators rather than human interface. This includes digital attendance of students and teachers, digital fund transfers, the time it takes the state government to release funds, filling vacancies and transferring teachers through a transparent online system, and so on. Here, Nagaland scored as low as 220 out of 360 despite showing improvement from a score of 130 in 2017-18, and 174 in 2019-20.
Overall, a total of 7 States and UTs, namely Kerala, Punjab, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh have attained Level II (score 901-950) in 2020-21 as compared to none in 2017-18.
12 States/UTs joined Level III (score 851-900), 6 States/UTs joined Level IV (score 801-850), 6 States in Level V (score 751-800), 4 States in Level VI and one State viz., Arunachal Pradesh stayed in Level VII (score 651-700) in PGI 2020-21.
A total of 27 States and UTs have improved their total PGI score in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20.