Chandigarh: The Ministry of Education has released the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2025-26 for school education, with Chandigarh emerging as the best-performing state/Union Territory in the country. Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, and the Union Territory of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu jointly secured the next performance band.
Unlike previous years, the Ministry has not assigned numerical ranks to states and Union Territories. Instead, they have been grouped into performance bands, allowing multiple states with similar scores to be placed in the same category.
The index is based on 70 indicators across two broad categories—Outcomes and Governance & Management—covering six domains: learning outcomes and quality, access, infrastructure and facilities, equity, governance processes, and teacher education and training.
According to the report, no state or Union Territory achieved the top three performance bands—Utkarsh (above 90%), Uttam-1 (81–90%) or Uttam-2 (71–80%).
Chandigarh was the only Union Territory to be placed in the Uttam-3 category (61–70%), making it the highest performer in the country.
Punjab, Kerala, Delhi, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu were placed in the Prachesta-1 category (51–60%), jointly emerging as the next best-performing regions.
The report also released the Performance Grading Index for Districts (PGI-D), which evaluates districts on 600 marks across 70 indicators grouped into 11 domains, including digital learning, school safety and fund utilisation.
According to the report, 462 districts improved their overall performance scores, while 50 districts moved up by at least one performance grade. A total of 19 districts secured more than 70% marks and were placed in the Uttam-2 category, compared with 16 districts in the previous assessment.
Among the top-performing districts, Punjab had seven districts in the Uttam-2 category, followed by Delhi with four, Kerala with three, Maharashtra with two, while Chandigarh, Diu, and Hamirpur (Himachal Pradesh) had one district each.
