Chandigarh tops school education performance index; Punjab, Kerala, Delhi follow
Chandigarh emerged as the top performer in the Ministry of Education’s Performance Grading Index 2025-26 for school education. Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu secured the next performance band, with no state achieving the highest grade
New Delhi: Chandigarh is at top among the best performing states and Union Territories in school education while Punjab, Kerala and Delhi are at the second spot, according to the Performance Grading Index 2025-26 by Ministry of Education.
The UT of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu is also at the second spot besides the three states. The Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 evaluates the performance of states and UTs by categorising them into different grades rather than assigning ranks.
This grading approach allows multiple states and UTs to be placed within the same performance band, thereby promoting a more balanced and constructive assessment framework.
PGI 2.0 is constructed based on 70 indicators across two categories namely Outcomes and Governance and Management, comprising six domains: Learning Outcomes and Quality, Access, Infrastructure & Facilities, Equity, Governance Processes, and Teachers Education and Training.
In PGI 2.0 state/UT, the nomenclature for PGI scores is classified into various grades. The highest achievable grade is called ‘Utkarsh’, which is for states and UTs scoring more than 90 per cent followed by ‘Uttam-1’ (81-90 pc), ‘Uttam-2’ (71-80 pc), ‘Uttam-3’ (61-70 pc), ‘Prachesta-1’ (51-60 pc), ‘Prachesta-2’ (41-50 pc) and ‘Prachesta-3’ (31-40 pc).
The states and UTs have also figured in the Akanshi-1 category (21-30 pc), Akanshi-2 (11-20 pc) and Akanshi-3 (up to 10 pc). “No state or UT has achieved the Utkarsh, Uttam-1 and Uttam-2 grade and Chandigarh is the only one to feature in the Uttam-3 category. No state and UT has figured in Akanshi-1 and Akanshi-2 category,” the report said.
Among the districts, no district has attained highest grade of Utkarsh in 2025-26 but one district has attained Uttam-1 grade and 13 districts have reached Uttam-2 grade as compared to 16 in 2024-25.
“A total of 462 districts have improved their score in outcomes, out of which 50 districts have made grade level improvement. None of the districts attained the highest grade, Utkarsh and Uttam-1 in either 2024-25 or 2025-26 implying there is ample scope for the districts to further improve their performance in future years,” the district PGI said.
As many as 19 districts reached the Uttam-2 grade in 2025–26 by achieving more than 70 pc of the total score, compared with 16 districts in 2024-25. Furthermore, number of districts in Uttam-3 grade has increased from 75 to 97 and Prachesta-1 grade has decreased from 332 to 325 during 2025-26 vis-a-vis 2024-25 showing improvements.
The 19 top performing districts include four from Delhi, seven in Punjab, three in Kerala and two in Maharashtra. Chandigarh, Diu and Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh) are also on the list.
The PGI-D framework comprises a total weightage of 600 points across 70 indicators, which are grouped under 6 categories — Outcomes, Effective Classroom Transaction, Infrastructure Facilities & Student Entitlements, School Safety and Child Protection, Digital Learning and Governance Process.
These categories are further divided into 11 domains–Learning Outcomes and Quality (LOQ); Access Outcomes; Teacher Availability and Professional Development Outcomes (TAPDO); Learning Management (LM);Learning Enrichment Activities (LEA); Infrastructure, Facilities, Student Entitlements (IF&SE); School Safety and Child Protection; Digital Learning (DL); Funds Convergence and Utilisation (FCU), Attendance Monitoring Systems (AMS) and School Leadership Development (SLD).
