New Delhi: Odisha ranked 7 in large states category in school education quality index (SEQI) for 2016-17 released by NITI Aayog Monday to evaluate the performance of states and union territories (UTs) in the school education sector.
The state also performed well in the incremental performance ranking by securing fourth position.
According to NITI Aayog, Odisha has performed better on the Governance Processes Aiding Outcomes category. The state has witnessed 18.5 per cent growth in performance on the governance processes aiding outcomes category. The state’s score in the base year, 2015-16, was 43.4 per cent which has increased to 61.1 per cent in reference year 2016-17. The governance process aiding outcomes category accounts for about 30 per cent of the overall score. It includes indicators related to student and teacher attendance system, availability of in-service teachers’ profession development, school leadership, accountability, transparency in teacher recruitment and financial discipline.
However, the state schools performed poorly in terms of infrastructure. The NITI Aayog report suggests that state schools are not having adequate infrastructure. It scored 22.92 per cent in terms of computer related learning being provided to the students while 82.12 per cent schools are having libraries. The report also said that only 0.1 per cent schools have vocational courses for the students of Class IX to XII.
Significantly, Kerala, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Assam are the best performing large states, each achieving an overall performance score above 60per cent. Kerala has the highest overall performance score of 76.6 per cent. Uttar Pradesh ranks last among the large states, with an overall performance score of 36.4 per cent.