NEW DELHI, October 18 — The Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), under the Ministry of Education, released the comprehensive Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D 2026) on Sunday, evaluating sub-national school education delivery across 742 districts.
The grading framework assesses districts on a composite 600-point rubric across 83 granular indicators structured into six key domains: Outcomes, Effective Classroom Transactions, Infrastructure and Entitlements, Governance Processes, Teacher Education, and Digital Learning adoption. Districts across Kerala, Punjab, Chandigarh, and Tamil Nadu secured top performance bands, while rapid score improvements were registered across designated Aspirational Districts.
Education ministry leadership underlined that PGI-D equips district educational officers and municipal commissioners with empirical data to pinpoint learning disparities, deploy targeted foundational literacy interventions under the NIPUN Bharat mission, and optimize pedagogical budget allocations under Samagra Shiksha.
The transformative roadmap of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020 replacing the 1986 policy with a 5+3+3+4 pedagogical structure), constitutional provisions under Article 21A and the RTE Act 2009, and the mandate of PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) are vital for UPSC GS-II and teaching exams.