Maha’s fares poorly in school education, according to union govt report

NCP president Sharad Pawar has written to his nephew Ajit Pawar, urging the Maharashtra government to take corrective measures to improve the state's ranking in school education, which dropped from second to seventh position according to a recent index report. This is Pawar's first letter to Ajit since the split in the NCP. Maharashtra scored 583.2 out of 1,000 in the index.

MUMBAI: Over 10 days since the split in Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the party president Sharad Pawar has written to his nephew Ajit Pawar, who was inducted in the coalition government as deputy chief minister, and chief minister Eknath Shinde and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to bring their attention on the dip in Maharashtra’s performance in school education. The NCP chief also wrote to school education minister Deepak Kesarkar about the matter.

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Pawar was referencing an index report, recently released by the union ministry of education, which showed the state’s rank dropping from the second to seventh position. He has urged the state government to take corrective measures to regain its lost position.

This is Pawar’s first letter to Ajit, since the latter rebelled against his leadership and split NCP by taking a majority of MLAs with him. Ajit has also made a claim on the name and election symbol of NCP.

“The progressive Maharashtra has rich inheritance in education. The doors of education are open for students from general, bahujan and hard working classes. Despite that, the state’s ranking dropped to the seventh position in the performance grading index (PGI) 2.0 from the previous second position,” states the letter written on Thursday.

“The state government should take all these issues seriously and take appropriate action to bring Maharashtra back to the top position in education. The government should call a meeting of the concerned officials and take corrective steps by preparing an action plan,” he remarked.

The index is based on an analysis of education and the students’ performance in schools across the country. The department of school education and literacy of the union ministry of education prepares the PGI for each state and union territory of the country. The index assesses the performance of the school education system at the state/ union territory levels.

The evaluation divides states into 10 grades based on learning outcomes and quality (LO), availability (A), infrastructure (IF), equity (E), administrative process (GP), and teacher education and training (TE and T) among others.

Maharashtra has scored 583.2 out of 1,000 in the index.