Chitradurga, Belagavi and Dharwad are ranked among ‘Athi Utham’ (very good) districts in the country in school-education performance, says a report released by the ministry of education. The Performance Grading Index for Districts of India for 2019-20 was prepared by the department of school education and literacy, department of education, government of India. It analyzed the performance of districts in six domains: Outcomes, effective classroom transaction, infrastructure facilities and student’s entitlements, school safety and child protection, digital learning and governance process.
Three Karnataka dists get Athi-Uttam tag
Based on scores, the districts were graded Daksh (90-100%), Utkarsh (80-90%), Athi Utham (71-80%), Utham (61-70%), Prachesta 1 (51-60%), Prachesta 2 (41-50%), Prachesta 3 (31-40%), Akanshi 1 (21-30%), Akanshi 2 (11-20%) and Akanshi 3 (up to 10%).
While no district in the country secured the Daksh rank, only three from Rajasthan were called Utkarsh. Three districts from Karnataka were labeled as Athi-Uttam. Twenty-five districts from Karnataka were declared Uttham (50-60%). Bengaluru Urban North, Mysuru, Udupi, Raichur, Chikmagalur and Kalaburagi were among the country’s 238 Prachesta-1 districts.
Belagavi was among the top 10 in the country in outcomes. This includes learning outcomes and quality, access, teacher availability and professional development. With a score of 219 out of 290, Belagavi was only a few points behind Sikar (228), Jhunjhunu (236), Jaipur (228), Nagaur (227) in Rajasthan and Jagatsinghpur (223) in Odisha.
Interestingly, Karnataka, along with Chandigarh, fared second in the outcome category for the states. Rajasthan scored 168/180 and led the country. Dharwad fared best in Karnataka in governance; and Chitradurga, Uttara Kannada and Chikkaballapura topped the state in infrastructure.
The report is based on voluntary uploading of data by the districts and from various sources like Unified District Information System for Education Plus and National Achievement Survey 2017.
“The PGI-D is a ranking only for the government sector – government, aided, corporation and zilla panchayat schools. Many districts like Udupi, Chikmagalur and Bengaluru North (which are in Prachesta-1) have a large number of private unaided schools which are quite good, but not covered in this analysis. The other districts in Prachesta-1 – Raichur, Kalaburagi and Mysuru – are in that category because even the government schools there are not up to the mark,” explained AS Seetharamu, educationist and former professor at Institute of Social and Economic Change.
