Himachal continues to perform well in the national-level education reports and surveys. In the Performance Grading Index (PGI) for 2024-25, released by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, Himachal has jumped seven places to finish overall sixth (UTs and states) and third among states.
Himachal was placed 13 in 2023-24, and 21 in 2022-23 in PGI. Education Minister Rohit Thakur calls the PGI performance another feather in the cap of the government and the education department of the state.
“Over the last three years, the state has improved its standings in all national level surveys. Our learning outcomes improved significantly in the ASER Report. We jumped from 21 position to fifth place in the National Achievement Survey last year, and now we have seen a big improvement in PGI rankings,” he said.
The PGI 2.0 evaluates the education system of the states and the union territories across two categories – outcomes and governance and management. The two categories are further divided into six domains – learning outcomes and quality, access, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance processes and teachers’ education and training.
As per the report, Himachal has been placed in the “Prachesta 2” category, the second highest category, with a total score of 659.2 out of 1,000, recording an improvement of 85.4 points over the last year’s report. Among various domains, the state has scored 90.5 per cent in ‘Equity’, which deals with inclusive and equitable education. The state has scored well in the ‘Access’ and ‘Teacher Education and Training’ domain”, scoring 86.6 per cent and 80.3 per cent, respectively.
In the ‘Leaning Outcomes and Quality’ domain, probably the most important, the state has recorded significant improvement. From 52.4 points in 2023-24, the score has improved to 117.19 in the latest report. There’s, however, scope for further improvement as the total weightage in this domain is 240 points.
The ‘Governance Processes’ domain is where the state needs to focus hard. In this domain, the state has scored 49.9 points out of 130. The domain includes indicators related to Aadhar seeding, digital attendance system, internet-enabled school processes, etc.
Attributing the consistently good performance to team work, the Education Minister said that the government’s focus on providing quality education and consolidation of resources was the core reason behind the turnaround in the education sector. “We need to improve further but we have made good progress over the last three years,” said Thakur.
