Goa improves in school edu sector, says national index

Panaji: Goa improved its performance slightly in the school education sector for the years 2022-23 and 2023-24, according to the Union education ministry’s performance grading index (PGI).The national index, which was released on Wednesday, saw India’s smallest state moving to the ‘Prachesta-3’ category from the ‘Akanshi-1’ category. Goa’s score was in the 581-640 range out of a total of 1,000 points.‘Daksh’ is the highest level that can be attained in the PGI, and is reserved for those states that score between 941 and 1,000 points, but no states have made it to the first four categories (’Daksh’, ‘Utkarsh’, ‘Atti-Uttam’ and ‘Uttam’).

Only Chandigarh has reached ‘Prachesta-1’ with a score range of 701-760. The lowest category is ‘Akanshi-3’.Goa has landed in the second best achievement tier, and is among nine other states in the index that annually assesses quality of school education across the country.In the assessment released for both years — 2022-23 and 2023-24 — Goa improved its score from the 521-580 bracket in 2021-22 to 581 in 2022-23, and further to 589.7 in 2023-24.

Among the parameters of the index, the state performed well in the domains of access, equity, infrastructure and facilities, governance processes, and teacher training and education.Its score in learning outcomes, however, was only 61.4 out of 240. Earlier, Goa’s students had performed poorly in the National Achievement Survey in certain subjects like maths and science.The objective of the PGI is to get states and Union Territories to undertake interventions to achieve better education outcomes in terms of quality. The index is also aimed at motivating states and UTs to adopt the best educational practices followed by the top performing regions.Goa did the best in equity, scoring 223 out of 260.