Nagpur: There is something to cheer for the pandemic hit education sector in Maharashtra, as schools’ performance rose one step this year to ‘Level III’ in the central government’s latest Performance Grading Index (PGI).
Going by the points scored by all states and UTs, Maharashtra ranks eighth with 869 (out of 1,000) points.
Released on Sunday by Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, the PGI 2019-20 report grades school education performance in states/UTs into levels (I-X) based on the points they score.
These points are given based on 70 different indicators (SEE INFO GFX).
While no state has been able to reach the highest Level I, there were new entrants in Level II.
Maharashtra shares its Level III status with six other states/UTs.
The need to grade states/UTs, according to the government, was needed to monitor the effects of various schemes being run for school education.
A note in the PGI report says, “the schemes initiated by the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) along with the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, have resulted in significant improvement in accessibility.
As a logical next step, the focus has now shifted from access to quality of education.” To measure the quality of education, a comprehensive set of criteria was decided with over 70 major indicators.
The data used to measure performance of states/UTs is already part of the education governance ecosystem.
Data from Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), National Achievement Survey (NAS) of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Mid-Day Meal (MDM) website, Public Fund Management System (PFMS) and the Shagun portal were collated.
Ashnarayan Tiwari, executive member of School Headmasters Charitable Association and principal of Adarsh Vidya Mandir (Gandhibagh), said, “It is heartening to know that even the central government is recognizing the collective efforts of schools in implementing various schemes of the government along with raising the quality of education.
The credit has to go to teachers and principals because apart from academics, we are ensuring that every benefit like midday meals reaches the child.”