Bhubaneswar: Odisha has been placed among the top 10 states in Performance Grading Index (PGI) for the year 2020-21.

The Department of School Education and Literacy of Ministry of Education released the PGI for states and union territories (UTs) for the year 2020-21 recently.

The PGI is a unique index for evidence based comprehensive analysis of school education system in all states and union territories.

Odisha has secured 10^th rank in the PGI for the year 2020-21. It had been placed at 14^th rank in the PGI for the year 2019-20, sources said.

“Odisha has made significant improvements in PGI 2020-21 and has emerged as one of the top 10 ranked states by securing 877 points out of 1,000,” said the School and Mass Education (S&ME) department today.

The S&ME department has claimed that setting up of Odisha Adarsha Vidyalayas, transformation of high schools under the 5T initiative of the state government and digital learning initiatives during the Covid-19 pandemic have helped Odisha to improve its rank in the PGI.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, meanwhile, congratulated the S&ME department for improvement in Odisha’s PGI rank.

“Congratulations @SMEOdisha as #Odisha has been placed among the top 10 states in PGI 2020-21 for States and UTs by @EduMinOfIndia. With effective implementation of policies and initiatives, Odisha has jumped to Rank 10 in 2020-21 from Rank 14 in 2019-20,” said the Chief Minister’s Office in a twitter post today.

Notably, the primary objective of PGI is to promote evidence-based policy making and highlight course correction to ensure quality education for all.

The PGI structure comprises of 1,000 points across 70 indicators grouped into two categories—Outcomes and Governance Management (GM). These two categories are further divided into 5 domains--Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), Infrastructure& Facilities (IF), Equity (E) and Governance Process (GP).

The PGI 2020-21 classified the states/UTs into ten grades with the highest achievable Grade is Level 1, which is for state/UT scoring more than 950 points out of total of 1,000 points.  The lowest grade is Level 10 which is for score below 551.

The ultimate aim of PGI is to propel states & UTs towards undertaking multi-pronged interventions that will bring about the much-desired optimal education outcomes covering all dimensions. The PGI is expected to help states and UTs to pinpoint the gaps and accordingly prioritize areas for intervention to ensure that the school education system is robust at every level.

A total of seven states and UTs--Kerala, Punjab, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh--have attained Level II (score 901-950) in 2020-21.