Background The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socio-economic backgrounds. Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSE&L), Ministry of Education devised Performance Grading Index (PGI) for States and released report for the reference years 2017-18 to 2020-21. Based on the success of State PGI, 83-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. The indicator-wise PGI score shows the areas where a district needs to improve. Post implementation of National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), PGI-D parameters used till 2021-22 are further aligned and revitalized in PGI-D 2022-23. This helps District level authorities to monitor implementation of NEP in more effective ways. Methodology The PGI-D structure comprises of total weightage of 600 points across 74 indicators, which are grouped under 6 categories viz., Outcomes, Effective Classroom Transaction, Infrastructure, Facilities & Student Entitlements, School Safety & Child Protection, Digital Learning and Governance Process. These categories are further divided into 11 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes and Quality (LOQ), Access Outcomes (AO), Teacher Availability and Professional Development Outcomes (TAPDO), Learning Management (LM), Learning Enrichment Activities (LEA), Infrastructure, Facilities, Student Entitlements (IF & SE), School Safety and Child Protection (SS & CP), Digital Learning (DL), Funds convergence and utiliation (FCV), Attendance Monitoring Systems (AMS) and School Leadership Development (SLD). PGI-D grades the districts into ten grades viz., Highest achievable Grade is Utkarsh, which is for Districts scoring more than 90% of the total points in that category or overall. The lowest grade in PGI-D is called Akanshi-3 which is for scores upto10% of the total points. 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. PGI-D Combined report for 2022-23 & 2023-24 The PGI-D 2022-23 comprises of 768 districts where as PGI-D 2023- 24 consist of 788 districts. This is due to addition of 20 new districts during 2023-24 viz., 3 in Delhi (North East District is bifurcated to North East I and North East II, North West B District is bifurcated to North West B I and North West B II and Similarly South West B District is bifurcated to South West B I and South West B II) and 17 in Rajasthan (Anoopgarh, Balotara, Beawar, Deeg, Didwana-Kuchaman, Dudu, Gangapur City, Jaipur(Rural), Jodhpur(Rural), Kekri, Khairthal-Tijara, Kotputli-Behror, Neem Ka Thana, Phalodi, Salumbar, Sanchore and Shahpura). None of the districts attained highest grade Utkarsh and Uttam-1 in both 2022-23 and 2023- 24 implying there is ample scope for the districts to further improve their performance in future years. One district (Barnala, Punjab) reached Uttam-2 grade in 2023-24 by achieving more than 70% of scores, there was none in 2022-23 in this grade. Furthermore, Number of districts in Prachesta-1 grade has increased from 204 to 281 during 2023-24 vis-à-vis 2022-23 showing remarkable improvements. To read the complete report, click here. PGI for districts report - 2020-21 & 2021-22 Being the Covid Pandemic years and learning outcomes based on NAS 2021 have impacted the performance of districts during 2020-21 to 2021-22 as compared to 2019-20. None of the districts attained top two grade viz., Daksh and Utkarsh during 2020-21 & 2021-22 implying there is ample scope for the districts to further improve their performance in future years. Year wise performance analysis of districts reveals that, 79 districts made consistent improvement in PGI-D scores in last 4 years viz., 2018-19 to 2021-22, whereas 25 districts consistently performed poorly during the same period. Inspite of Covid pandemic at its peak in 2021-22, 290 districts have made notable improvement in their performance when compared 2019-20 (pre-pandemic) with 2021-22. Overall 194 districts have made grade level improvement in 2021-22 as compared to 2018-19, and of these 194, 7 districts had highest performance securing 3 grade jumps in 2021-22 as compared 2018-19, 23 districts improved their performance by securing upward shift of two grades in 2021-22, 164 districts improved their grade by one level in 2021-22 as compared to 2018-19. Total of 375 districts remained in the same grade in 2021-22 as compared to 2018-19 and remaining 158 district’s performance deteriorated during 2021-22 as compared to 2018-19. To read the complete report, click here. Previous Reports To view the previous year reports, click here. Source : Ministry of Education