By Our Correspondent
CUTTACK/BHUBANESWAR: While reacting to BJD MP Dr Sasmit Patra’s allegations and claims after the Ministry of Education released its PGI-D for report 2020-22 , senior BJP leader and former Odisha Higher Education Minister , Samir Dey in a statement said, on Monday, that the ruling party doing dirty politics.
BJD MP Patra’s statement smacks more of politics than worry about the issue. Instead of finding the causes of poor performance, the ruling BJD is finding loopholes in the report. It is a matter of grace concern not only for the education system but also future of students in the state, Dey said.
Dey held the 5T initiative of Odisha government responsible for falling standard of school education in the state.
As per the performance grading index (PGI 2.0) report released by the Union ministry of education, Odisha has slipped from 10th rank in 2020-21 to 24th spot in 2021-22.
The drop in the rank shows negligence of the state government towards education. The PGI report points out that closure of schools, lack of classrooms and toilets and absence of teachers from duty are major contributing factors for poor show of the state in education and Government busy in advertisement , the former Minister said adding PGI report has been publishing since 2017-18.
The BJP leader said since the education system was brought under 5T Initiative of the government, the standard of students has nosedived. Besides changing outer looks of the school buildings under the initiative, no major step has been taken for improving the quality of education, she added.
In the name of transformation of schools, 5T has introduced a contractual system in the education system thereby causing more harm than good to the future of the students,” Dey said.
Odisha, which ranked at the 10th position of the PGI report in the 2020-21 academic year, has now slipped by 14 positions and secured 24th spot this academic session raising questions about the education system in the state.
While Jagatsinghpur, Cuttack, Bhadrak, Ganjam, Puri, and Khordha scored ‘Ati-Uttam’ grade in the PGI, 24 districts’ performance has been marked Uttam. However, the PGI score for Rayagada and Koraput was recorded lowest and their performance was marked Prachesta-1.
Punjab, Chandigarh, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Kerala topped the index. During Covid, Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab were the best-performing states.
Meanwhile, the nosedive of Odisha in PGI has raised concerns among educationists. The Ministry of Education assesses the performance of the school education system at the state and Union Territory levels by creating an index for comprehensive analysis.
The Performance Grading Index – States/UTs was first released for the year 2017-18 and so far, has been released up to the year 2020-21. The PGI looks at the Indian education system as one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socioeconomic backgrounds.
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. DoSE&L 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. PGI-D report for 2018-19 and 2019-20 has been released so far the current one is combined report for 2020-21 & 2021-22.
The PGI-D structure comprises of total weight age of 600 points across 83 indicators, which are grouped under 6 categories viz., Outcomes, Effective Classroom Transaction, Infrastructure Facilities & Student’s Entitlements, School Safety & Child Protection, Digital Learning and Governance Process.
These categories are further divided into 12 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes and Quality (LO), 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 utilization (FCV), Enhancing CRCs Performance (CRCP), Attendance Monitoring Systems (AMS) and School Leadership Development (SLD).
