The Niti Aayog has placed Karnataka at the third position in the country for its overall performance in the delivery of quality school education in the first School Education Quality Index (SEQI) and ranking of the states released here on Monday.
Karnataka was also found to be leading other states in its performance in domains of learning outcomes, access, equity and infrastructure in the school education sector.
But, the Modi government’s think tank, in its report indicated that much has to be done at the level of the policymakers and the government in
Karnataka to maintain and further improve the delivery of quality school education in the state.
Karnataka showed a significant decline in its performance in school education sector on a range of critical parameters when the Niti Aayog conducted an assessment of the state’s “incremental” progress in the delivery of quality education in schools between 2015-16 and 2016-17.
Based on the assessment of Karnataka’s “incremental” progress, the Niti Aayog placed the state in 13th rank for the year 2016-17 giving it 52.90% score. For the year 2015-16, Karnataka was ranked 5th with 56.60% score. The Niti Aayog conducted the assessment and ranking of the states on the basis of the Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE) data collected under the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry and the National Assessment Survey (NAS) data, released by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for 2017.
Assessment of the performance of the states was done on two broad categories—Outcomes and Governance Process aiding the Outcomes.
Kerala emerged on top among 20 large states in the delivery of quality school education, followed by Rajasthan. Uttar Pradesh was ranked at the bottom for the year 2016-17. The report was jointly released by the Niti Aayog, HRD ministry and the World Bank.
“It provides states and the Union Territories with a platform to identify their strengths and weaknesses and undertake requisite course corrections or policy interventions,” Niti Aayog Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Kant said at a press conference.
Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said time had now come to focus on improving the quality of school education.
“Now, we see more children in our schools but how much is the learning outcome is the key as school education is the foundation to prepare the future generation,” he said.
