Demographic dividend an albatross without good school education

When pandemic and vaccination dominate our minds, the education ministry’s Performance Grading Index comes as a welcome distraction.Some bits are not very surprising. Tamil Nadu and Kerala do better than most, and Bihar remains at the bottom of the pile, particularly in school infrastructure, along with tribal Chhattisgarh. But Meghalaya and Nagaland do not do well, while showing slight improvement. 

The real surprise is that Punjab does better than all, and is at the top of the pile—it has jumped up from a mere 769 to 929 on a scorechart of 1,000. It even outshines its own capital, the Union territory of Chandigarh, which is still not just the most well-laid-out city in India but boasts reasonably modern infrastructure on most counts. But then, Chandigarh and Tamil Nadu have outdone Kerala, which is generally the country’s human index topper. Karnataka, despite its ‘IT hub/start-up haven’ image, languishes at Level 3, scoring no more than 813. In fact, only five states and UTs have scored more than 90%, touching Level 2. Unfortunately, none in India qualify as Level 1 in school PGI, where the parameters are governance, infrastructure/administration and learning outcomes—restricting dropouts, enhancing enrolment and mainstreaming students. Gujarat, which was the runner-up last time, has slid quite a few notches and is no longer in Level 2. Madhya Pradesh, similarly, drops down on the performance chart. The lowest score has been wangled by Ladakh, with just 545. Obviously, autonomy from J&K has not brought in the results yet. The third edition of the National Assessment of Schools tested school students from Classes III, V, VIII and X, on 70-odd indicators. 

Hopefully, the scores will come as a sobering wake-up call to the laggards. Without good school education and a healthy nutritional profile to go with it—and, needless to say, an economy robust enough to absorb them—India’s demographic dividend may just turn into an albatross.