States’ report card: Chandigarh is best performer in school education, Meghalaya at the bottom

Chandigarh excels in school education, while Meghalaya lags behind in the Performance Grading Index report by Ministry of Education.

Chandigarh has been adjudged the best performer in school education for the academic year 2023-24, while Meghalaya appears in the lowest rung of the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 report released by Union Ministry of Education on Wednesday (June 18, 2025). 

The States are graded on a wide range of indicators, including learning outcomes and quality, access, infrastructure, equity, governance processes, tand eacher education and training, for a total of 1,000 points. 

None of the States feature in the top scoring range of 761-1,000, which suggests that there is huge scope for improvement, Ministry officials said. The report shows that 24 States and Union Territories improved their scores in 2023-24, in comparison to the previous year, while the remaining 12 States/UTs saw declining scores.

Chandigarh achieved a score of 719, and is the sole State to reach Grade Prachesta-1, for scores between 701 to 760. Ten States and Union Territories — Punjab, Delhi, Gujarat, Odisha, Kerala, Dadra Nagar Haveli and Daman Diu, Haryana, Goa, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan — have scored between 581 and 640, called Grade Prachesta-3.

At the other end of the scale is Meghalaya, which scored 417, thus falling into the category of scorers between 401 and 460, labelled as Akanshi-3. Other States who have far to go to improve the quality of school education are Telangana, Assam, Jharkhand, Tripura, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh, who have been put in the Akanshi-2 category, as they have scored between 461 and 520.

In the middle ranks are fourteen States/UTs — Puducherry, Himachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Lakshadweep, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, and Ladakh — which scored between 521 and 580, labelled Akanshi-1.

To assess States’ performance in providing access to school education, multiple indicators were used, including enrolment and retention of students, transition of students to the next grade, and identification and mainstreaming of out-of-school children. “In this domain, Bihar and Telangana have made the highest improvement,” officials said.