'Sikar highest performing dist in school edu pan India'

New Delhi: Rajasthan's Sikar is the highest performing district in school education followed by Jhunjhunu and Jaipur, according to Union Ministry of Education's Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D).

The three districts have figured in the 'Utkarsh' category (scoring 81-90 per cent on a scale of 100) with Junjhunu scoring the maximum (236 out of 290) in learning outcomes.

Also, in the second grade 'Ati-uttam', Rajasthan is significantly ahead of the second and third top states having 24 of its districts in this category.

The other states whose districts have performed best in the latest index released by the Ministry of Education (MoE) on Monday are Punjab with 14 districts in 'Ati-uttam' grade (scoring 71-80 per cent on a scale of 100) followed by Gujarat and Kerala with each

having 13 districts in this category. On the other hand, there are 12 states and Union Territories which don't have any districts in the Ati-uttam and Uttam categories which include seven of the eight states from the North East region.

The Ministry on Monday released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2018-19 and 2019-20 which assesses the performance of school education system at the district level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis. PGI-D grades districts into 10 grades with highest achievable grade being 'Daksh', which is for districts scoring more than 90 per cent of total points. '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. According to the report for 2019-20 and 2018-19, none of the districts attained highest grade Daksh in both 2019-20 and 2018-19 implying there is ample scope for the districts to further improve their performance in future years.

Three districts reached Utkarsh grade in 2019-20 by achieving more than 80 per cent of the score, there was none in 2018-19 in this grade.

"Ultimate objective of PGI-D is to help the districts to priorities areas for intervention in school education and thus improve to reach the highest grade. Eighty three indicator based PGI for District (PGI-D) has been designed to grade the performance of all districts in school education.

The data is filled by districts through online portal. 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," a senior MoE official said.

"The indicator-wise PGI score shows the areas where a district needs to improve. The PGI-D will reflect the relative performance of all the districts in a uniform scale which encourages them to perform better," the official added.