NEW DELHI: Digital learning in schools is gradually improving with more than 60 districts showing improvements between 2018-2019 and 2019-20, according to the latest district-wise ranking of school education.
Among the southern states, digital learning grading is lowest in the districts of Andhra Pradesh and the highest in Kerala, according to the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D) for 2018-19 and 2019-20 released by the Department of School Education and Literacy, under the Ministry of Education.
The progress in digital learning is slow but steady, said the survey, which for the first time rated districts on the standard of schools.
The number of districts in the third-highest “Ati Uttam” category of the index doubled from four to eight in 2019-20. None of the districts could make it to the top two categories of “Daksh” and “Utkarsh”. The number of districts in the “Uttam” category in digital learning also went up from 27 to 41.
According to the survey, 20 districts showed 20 percent improvements in their score while the performance of 43 districts went up by 10 percent.
Districts scoring more than 90 per cent are categorised as “Daksh”. “Utkarsh” is the second-highest-ranking scoring 81 to 90 per cent, followed by “Ati Uttam” (71 to 80 per cent), “Uttam” (61 to 70 per cent), Prachesta-1 (51 to 60 per cent), Prachesta-2 (41 to 50 per cent), Prachesta-3 (31 to 40 per cent), Akanshi-1 (21 to 30 per cent) and Akanshi-2 (11 to 2p per cent).
The survey released on Monday said that in many Andhra Pradesh districts like Srikakulam, Chittoor, Kurnool, Kadapa and Nellore, the digital learning scores were less than 10 out of the grading of 50.
In comparison, most Kerala districts scored around 30. Even in Tamil Nadu, where two districts – Dharmapuri and Villuparam – were placed in the “Ati Uttam” category for their overall performance, the digital learning curve remains low.
Most of the Tamil Nadu districts have scored less than 30, Chennai being the best with 27 and Thoothukkudi lowest with 14 in digital learning.
Most of the Karnataka districts have scored below 20 barring Bidar, Dakshin Kannada, Mandya, Bengaluru (South) and Bengaluru (North).
Overall, the states have shown improvement when compared to the numbers in 2018-19. At the national level, Junagadh in Gujarat with 39 and Jaipur in Rajasthan with 38 are the two top districts in digital learning.