“Daksh” districts are those that score more than 90 percent overall or in a certain parameter, while “Akanshi-3” are districts with a score of 10 percent.
Between these two grades, are “Utkarsh” (score of 81-90 percent), “Ati Uttam” (score of 71-80 percent), “Uttam” (score of 61-70 percent), “Prachesta-1″(score of 51 to 60 percent), “Prachesta-2” (score of 41 to 50 percent), “Prachesta-3” (score of 31 to 40 percent), “Akanshi-1” (score of 21 to 30 percent) and “Akanshi-2” (score of 11 to 30 percent).
While Dakhsh means excellent, Utkash means superior, Ati Uttam means of very good quality, Uttam means of good quality, Prachesta (which is further graded into three) means attempt, effort or endeavour and Akanshi (divided into 1,2 & 3) means aspirant.
According to Friday’s report, 489 of a total of 748 districts were relegated to the bottom three grades in the digital learning parameter in 2021-22, a slight improvement from the 503 in 2020-21. However, the 2021-22 performance showed a decline from the 2019-20 academic year, when only 451 districts were in the bottom categories in digital learning. In 2018-19, a total of 505 districts were in the bottom three grades in digital learning.
While the digital learning parameter was introduced in the grades this year, data has been collected from the 2018-19 academic year onwards.
The dismal scores come despite the central government’s efforts to promote digital education in the country. In the budget session of 2023, acknowledging learning losses due to the closure of schools during the Covid pandemic, the Modi government even expanded the ”one class-one TV channel” programme of PM e-Vidya from 12 to 200 TV channels, to help state governments provide supplementary education in regional languages for classes 1 to 12.
PM e-Vidya is a central government initiative to make digital, or online, learning easily accessible to all students on one platform.
The Union budget also increased the allocation for Samagra Shiksha to Rs 37,383 crore in 2022-23, from Rs 29,999 crore in 2021-22.
Samagra Shiksha is the flagship scheme of the ministry of education to improve effectiveness of school education, measured in terms of equal opportunities for schooling and equitable learning outcomes.
While Chandigarh and Punjab emerged as overall best performers — making it to Prachesta 2 — in 2021-22, Kerala and Maharashtra, which were among the top performers of 2020-21 along with Punjab, slipped to the second-best category in 2021-22, making it to Prachesta-3 with four other states and union territories (UT). In 2020-21, Kerala, Punjab, and Maharashtra had ranked the highest at Ati-Uttam.
Delhi improved its performance and climbed to the third position in 2021-22 from eighth in 2020-21.
However, no state or UT could achieve the highest grade — Daksh and Utkarsh — in either 2020-21 or 2021-22.
The three lowest-performing states and UTs overall were Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram, which were in the tenth grade — Akanshi 3.
Some states that have performed poorly on the digital learning indicator in both the past two years, are Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, with Punjab being the top performer in this segment.
Other states and UTs that had low scores on the digital learning parameter included Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand. All these states were rated among the lowest three grades in the ranking in terms of digital learning.
Another parameter which witnessed a significant drop in performance of districts in the year 2021-22 was ‘learning outcomes’, which carries 290 of the total 600 weightage. The performance of many districts in this segment fell from Uttam (third best) to Prachesta 1, 2 and 3.
However, in both 2020-21 and 2021-22, digital learning was the parameter in which districts fared the worst.
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Push for digital learning
Despite the government’s efforts to push for equitable digital learning, several districts underperformed on several parameters, especially digital learning.
Highlighting the poor performance by the states, the report said, “Under this category (digital learning), 10 districts have shown over 20 percent improvement in score and 74 districts have shown improvement of over 10 percent in score during 2021-22 compared to 2019-20.”
When it came to digital learning, 202 districts showed an improvement in grades in 2021-22.However, according to the report, a majority of the country’s districts remained in the bottom three grades in the parameter of digital learning, indicating the need for a boost in the area.
“In the last two years, Covid pandemic has highlighted the changes required to be made in our existing system in terms of the adoption of digital learning as part of mainstream learning to continue education at home in face of any such crisis. This necessitated a need for a domain on digital learning in PGI-D, which is not there in state PGI,” the report said.
The criteria for assessing digital learning in districts included factors like percentage of schools with internet facilities, computers or laptops, computer-assisted teaching and learning facility (like smart classrooms), student-to-computer ratio and percentage of teachers trained in computer-assisted teaching, the report highlighted.
Districts that fell short in digital learning parameter
In 2020-21 — when much of school education was imparted online due to the Covid-19 pandemic — 19 districts of Arunachal Pradesh scored less than 10 out of a maximum of 50 points in the digital learning domain.
Similarly, 20 districts in Jharkhand, 36 in Bihar, 48 in Madhya Pradesh, 17 in Jammu and Kashmir, and 11 in Meghalaya could not even reach a double-digit score on the digital learning scale.
In 2021-22, none of the 33 districts of Bihar scored above 10 points on the digital learning scale. In Assam, only one out of 34 districts managed to score more than 10 points in the area. In Uttar Pradesh, only 32 of 74 districts scored above 10 points.
Punjab topped the digital learning domain with an average score of 39 out of 50 for its 21 districts.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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