School Education Quality Index of Niti Aayog puts Delhi in third place among UTs

Vinod Kakumanu
Jan. 8, 2020, 10:16 a.m.

The schools in Delhi have fared not as well as expected in the ranking done by the NITI Aayog, in comparison with the schools in the other union territories. Theindex on which the rankings have been based is in turn based on published data from National Achievement Survey of MHRD and Unified District Information on School Education and reported data verified by NITI Aayog.

The UTS of Chandigarh and Dadar and Nagar Haveli have outranked Delhi. The rankings are based on the school education quality index released by NITI Aayog.The school quality index used in the assessment is the first of its kind.

The categories in which the schools in Delhi were find wanting include the categories of learning outcomes, in which they stood at the fourth place and governance where they stood second.

The school quality index is comprised of as many as 30 indicators devised to assess the quality of education.

The data on which the rankings are based was collected from all states and UTs, with the exception of West Bengal. To achieve a fair comparison, the regions were categorized into 3 categories-- large states (20), small states (8) and UTs (7).

Index provides for the assessment of relative progress of schools by comparing the performance of the preceding years by giving incremental rankings. The schools in Delhi recorded an improvement of 9.9 percentage points in the overall performance from 59.96% in reference year (2015-16) to 69.89% in base year (2016-17). In terms of incremental performance Delhi schools rank fourth.

Delhi ranked even poorer, sixth, in the learning outcomes category, in class 3 for language (58%) and mathematics (54%). For classes 5 and 8, the city ranks at fourth and third among other UTs.

The adjusted Net Enrollment Ratio (NER) at elementary level stood at 100% while that at secondary level stood at 85.9%. The transition rate from primary to upper-primary level stands at 94% while that of upper primary to secondary is 99%. Over 57% out of school children have been mainstreamed in 2016-17 as compared to 62.4% in 2015-16.

The report was published in collaboration with the World Bank and Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD).