Odisha moves up to Prachesta-2 in Centre’s education performance index

Odisha moves up to Prachesta-2 in Centre’s education performance indexDiana.Sahu@timesofindia.comBhubaneswar: Odisha has registered an improvement in the Performance Grading Index (PGI), prepared by the Union ministry of education to evaluate the quality of school education across states and Union Territories.The ministry earlier this week released the PGI 2.0 report for the 2024–25 session, which showed that Odisha recorded a significant improvement, rising from 595.6 points in 2023–24 to 655.2 this year. With this, the state secured the Prachesta-2 grade, considered a mid-to-upper-tier performance category.The PGI assesses school education performance in two broad categories, outcomes and governance and management. These are further divided into six domains: access, learning outcomes and quality, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance processes and teacher education and training.States and UTs are evaluated for these domains out of 1,000 points and classified into 10 grades ranging from Utkarsh (91%–100%) and Uttam 1, 2 & 3 (61%–90%) to Prachesta 1, 2 & 3 (40%–60%) and Akanshi 1, 2 & 3 (10%–30%).No state or UT secured the top Utkarsh or Uttam grades this year. Chandigarh and Punjab remained in the Prachesta-1 category after scoring between 701 and 760 points.Odisha was among six states and UTs to secure the Prachesta-2 grade by scoring in the 641–700 points bracket. The other states and UTs in this category are Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Kerala, Delhi, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh.The state had secured 595.6 points and a Prachesta-3 grade last year, while it scored 584.5 points in the 2022–23 academic session, indicating a steady upward trend in school education performance.In the district-level assessment, PGI-D, districts were evaluated out of 600 points across six categories - outcomes (290 points), effective classroom transaction (90), infrastructure facilities and student entitlements (51), school safety and child protection (35), digital learning (50) and governance process (84).Among Odisha districts, Jharsuguda and Sambalpur emerged as the top performers in the 2024–25 session, scoring 395 and 364 points respectively out of 600. Malkangiri recorded the lowest score at 298 points.However, digital literacy among students in govt schools has emerged as an area of concern. Only Jharsuguda, Sambalpur, Ganjam, Kandhamal, Sonepur, Jagatsinghpur, Khurda and Sundargarh scored more than 20 out of 50 points in the digital learning category.Jharsuguda recorded the highest score of 33 points, while Deogarh and Rayagada were among the lowest performers with 15 and 14 points, respectively.