According to the 2019-20 Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D), schools across India performed poorly in the category of digital learning.
This received the lowest scores when compared to the other parameters considered when creating the index. According to the index, 180 districts scored less than 10% on digital learning, 146 districts scored 11 to 20%, and 125 districts scored between 21 and 30%.
A Ministry of Education report released on Monday showed that as India entered the pandemic year, students in approximately 61% of the country’s districts had very little visibility to digital learning due to the limited amount of computers, Internet facilities, and teachers trained to handle technological tools in schools.
As per the index, 180 districts scored less than 10% on digital learn. 146 districts scored 11 to 20%, and 125 districts scored between 21 and 30%.
The report also emphasises the clear rural-urban divide in digital learning. While districts in cities like Chandigarh and Delhi scored between 25 and 35 out of 50, places like Araria and Kishanganj in Bihar scored as low as 2.
Backward districts such as Assam’s South Salmara-Mankachar and Tripura’s Dhalai received a score of one. The number of schools with computers/laptops, Internet access, student-to-computer ratio, and percentage of teachers trained to use and teach through computers was used to calculate district-level digital learning performance.
In terms of academic performance, no district scored less than 10%, 12 scored between 11 and 20%, and 309 scored between 51 and 60%.
In June 2021, the Centre released the state-by-state PGI index for the fiscal year 2019-20.
The best performers in the index were Chandigarh and the states of Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.
“The Covid-19 outbreak has highlighted issues needed in our current system in terms of adopting digital as part of mainstream learning to continue education at home. This necessitated the inclusion of a domain on digital learn in PGI-D, which does not exist in state PGI.
“Under the digital learning category, 20 districts improved by more than 20% and 43 districts improved by more than 10% during 2019-20 as compared to 2018-19, resulting in grade-level progress,” according to the PGI-D report.
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