The NITI Aayog on Monday released the School Education Quality Index (SEQI), which shows that Odisha has registered a significant improvement in this index.
While Odisha had been placed at the 13th rank in base year 2015-16, it moved up to the 7th position in the reference year 2016-17, the report said.
Odisha and four other States, Haryana, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, registered high rates of improvement in their overall performance score between 2015-16 and 2016-17.
Odisha is the fourth best State in term of improvement. The percentage figure increased from 47.8 in 2015-16 to 60.2 in 2016-17 with a 12.4-per cent improvement, the report added.
When apprised by Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy and School and Mass Education Secretary Chitra Armugam, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik advised the department to keep up the good work and endeavour for getting into top three.
It was also revealed that the State gained 18.5 per cent to rise from 43.4 per cent to reach at 61.9 per cent in the category of Governance Processing Aiding Outcomes, which consider factors covering student-teacher attendance, administrative adequacy, training, accountability, and transparency.
The other outcomes that the NITI Aayog considers are learning out comes, access outcomes, infrastructure and facilities and equity outcome. The State has also performed in these factors.
Notably, the SEQI was developed to evaluate the performances of the States and the Union
Territories (UTs) in the school education sector. The index aims to bring an outcome focus to education policy by providing the States and the UTs with a platform to identify their strengths and weaknesses and undertake requisite course corrections or policy interventions.