BHUBANESWAR: Access to school education and learning outcome of students in government schools of Odisha have improved significantly in the last two years.
The Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 report of the Ministry of Education for 2022-23 and 2023-24, which was released on Wednesday has ranked Odisha among the top-5 performing states in school education.
The PGI is an assessment of school education in 10 domains including access, learning outcome and quality, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance processes, teacher education and training.
The states and UTs were scored out of 1,000 points and classified into 10 grades from Daksh (top), Prachesta (mid-level) to Akanshi-3 (lowest). While no state/UT figured in the higher score ranges of 700 to 1,000 except Chandigarh, 10 others including Odisha scored in the 581-640 range (31 pc to 40 pc), achieving Prachesta-3 grade. While the state in the 2022-23 academic session had scored 584.5 points out of 1,000, this score improved by 11 points to 595.6 in 2023-24. It is the top-5 state as far as the overall score of 2023-24 session is concerned.
The state has also been able to improve enrolment, retention of students, transition of students to next grade, identification and mainstreaming of out-of-school children etc., which come under the access domain. In fact, Bihar, Telangana and Odisha are the top-3 states to do so. In 2022-23, the state had scored 59.2 in the access domain which rose to 65.6 in 2023-24.
In the district-specific assessment PGI-D, the districts were evaluated for 600 points across six categories of learning outcomes, effective classroom transaction, infrastructure facilities & student entitlements, school safety & child protection, digital learning and governance process. In Odisha, Jharsuguda continued to score the highest points in both the academic sessions, while Rayagada was the lowest performer.
However, what has come as a matter of concern is the digital literacy of students in government schools. None of the districts except Jharsuguda, Khurda, Sambalpur and Sonepur scored more than 20 points out of 50.