November 3, 2022
JAMMU: Jammu and Kashmir bagged 17th spot among all the States and Union Territories in the Performance Grading Index (PGI) for school education for the year 2020-21, an improvement of 9 positions over the past year, but has lagged behind a number of much smaller and younger states and union territories such as Ladakh, Andaman and Nicobar Island, Sikkim and Chandigarh.
In the rankings for the year 2020-21 released by the Union Ministry of Education on Wednesday, Jammu and Kashmir achieved 834 points of a maximum 1000 points, securing a place in the Level 4 (Grade 1).
In the year 2018-19, J&K- then a full-fledged state had scored 703 points and was positioned 29th in the country in Level 6 (Grade 3). In its first year as UT, it scored 763 points, bagging the 26th place in Level 5 (Grade 2).
Released by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, the PGI is a unique index for evidence based comprehensive analysis of school education system across State and UTs, and rates them on 70 indicators, grouped into 5 domains viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), Infrastructure& Facilities (IF), Equity (E) & Governance Process (GP), totaling to a maximum score of 1000.
In this year’s PGI, Jammu and Kashmir has scored 132 points out of 180 in Learning Outcomes, 61 out of 80 in Access, 133 out of 150 in Infrastructure & Facilities, 197 out of 230 in Equity and 311 out of 360 in Governance Process, adding to a total score of 834 out of 1000.
This puts J&K at 17th position among all states and UTs, and fifth among the UTs in the country. The Ladakh UT, which was carved out of J&K in 2019 has done much better in comparison, securing 14th position by scoring 844 points.
Not just Ladakh, Chandigarh, Punjab, Himachal, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka, TamilNadu, Sikkim, Andaman & Nicobar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Assam have performed better than Jammu and Kashmir in this year’s rankings.
The PGI assesses 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students across the country, to provide insights and data driven mechanism on school education to the states and UTs. It classifies the States and UTs into ten grades viz., highest achievable Grade is Level 1, for scores more than 950 points and lowest grade is Level 10 which is for score below 551. While none of the states and UTs could reach into Level 1, Kerala, Punjab, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh attained Level II (score 901-950) in this year’s PGI, while 12 states penetrated into Level III, followed by Ladakh among 6 States and UTs in Level IV.
