Tamil Nadu among top five achievers: Education index

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu is among the top five achievers in the key parameters of education such as access, equity, infrastructure and governance processes, according to the the Union ministry of education's Performance Grading Index (PGI) for 2019-20. The state has scored 906 points out of 1,000, an increase from 793 points in the previous year. However, the PGI district scorecard revealed that some districts have poor learning outcomes.Chennai district was among the bottom 10 districts in learning outcomes with 395 points out of 600.
Dharmapuri and Villupuram districts have been deemed to have better learning outcomes compared to other districts, according to the new Performance Grade Index-District (PGI-D) 2019-20 report.
Surprisingly, Chennai with better infrastructure is among the bottom 10 districts with an overall score of 395 of 600. Of 290 points for learning outcome category, it scored 141, below the 50% mark. In fact, Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts, Chennai's neighbouring districts, fared better compared to the state capital, registering overall scores of 420 and 419.
Dharmapuri and Villupuram districts scored 175 and 169 in learning outcomes out of 290 points which was the top scores among the Tamil Nadu districts and their overall scores were 431 and 425 out of 600 points in the six categories. These two districts secured "Ati-uttam" (a second grade with 71% to 80% score) in the education index released by the Union ministry of education on Monday.
As many as 27 districts including Chennai, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur managed to get the third grade, 'Uttam', with a score of 61% to 70% in categories such as learning outcomes, effective classroom interactions, infrastructure facilities, school safety and child protection, digital learning and governance process. They could not perform better despite scoring better in other categories due to poor scores in learning outcomes.
For example, most of the districts scored 40 out of 50 in infrastructure, while managing 80 out of 90 in the effective classroom interactions category. In school safety and child protection, most districts bagged 35 out of 35 points.
Krishnagiri, Ariyalur and Tiruppur districts got the lowest scores of 104, 84 and 86 out of 290 in learning outcomes and secured fourth grade in the index.
The data sourced from the National Achievement Survey (NAS) and Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE), however, showed that at the national level there was a marked improvement in learning outcomes, access and infrastructure till the pre-pandemic period from the previous years.
In the education index for 2019-20 released in 2021, Tamil Nadu had shown a big improvement as it was ranked among the top five achievers with 906 out of 1000 points with better performance in the key domains including access, infrastructure, equity and governance process over the previous year. However, the score for learning outcomes remained the same compared to previous year.
"While TN improved the access to education, it needs to focus on the learning quality of each child to bridge the learning gap due to the pandemic. They need to appoint teachers in primary schools to improve the learning," said educationist V Vasanthidevi.