Even as Arunachal Pradesh is observing 2021-22 as the ‘year of education’, the recent Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D), which measures the performance of the states in school education, showed poor performance by Arunachal Pradesh. As per the PGI-D for 2018-19 and 2019-20, released by the union education ministry, none of the districts in Arunachal figured in the top four categories/grades – ‘Daksh’, ‘Utkarsh’, ‘Ati Uttam’ and ‘Uttam’. In fact districts like Kra Daadi and Longding were ranked in the lowest category. The data released by the education ministry is an eye-opener for the state government as well as citizens of the state.
Just by declaring one year as the year of education is not going to drastically improve the education scenario of the state. It will need sustained and long-term effort from all the stakeholders. Today, the conditions of the government-run schools are not good. Poor infrastructures along with lack of teachers are a big challenge. There is need for rationalisation of teachers’ transfer and posting. Equal distribution of teachers should be made across the state. Right now there is concentration of teachers in the capital region and district headquarters. The infrastructure also should be upgraded. But unnecessary fund should not be spent. Infrastructure should be upgraded only on need basis. More efforts are needed to improve the scenario of government-run schools of the state. Then only Performance Grading Index will improve.