Shillong, July 8: Meghalaya has, in the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 for school education, climbed out of the lowest performance category after registering one of the country’s fastest improvements. Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui said the State’s overall score rose from 448 in 2024-25 to 525.71 in 2025-26, enabling it to leap two grades from Akanshi-3 to Akanshi-1, according to the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 Report for 2025-26 released by the Ministry of Education.
The improvement marks the first occasion that Meghalaya has moved above the lowest grade under the national school education assessment framework. The State now shares the Akanshi-1 category with Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Tripura, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
The Education Minister attributed the achievement to sustained reforms undertaken by the State Government over the past eight years, particularly during the last three years, saying improvements in governance, school infrastructure, teacher welfare, capacity building and evidence-based planning had begun to deliver measurable results.
The latest report shows Meghalaya’s score rising steadily from 401.62 in 2022-23 to 417.89 in 2023-24, 448 in 2024-25 and 525.71 in 2025-26, an overall increase of 124.09 points, or nearly 31%, placing the State among the fastest-improving States and Union Territories under the PGI framework.
The Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 evaluates school education across 70 indicators under six domains—Learning Outcomes and Quality, Access, Infrastructure and Facilities, Equity, Governance Processes, and Teacher Education and Training—using data from UDISE+, PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan, PM POSHAN, PRABANDH and Vidyanjali.
Among the key reforms highlighted by the Government is the Structured Pay Framework (SPF), which places different categories of fixed-pay teachers under a uniform pay structure linked to years of service, annual increments and contributory provident fund benefits. The Government said the reform had addressed long-pending service issues, improved teacher motivation and enabled greater focus on classroom teaching and student learning.
The State also undertook large-scale rationalisation and clustering of schools, reducing the number of schools from 14,641 in 2024-25 to 11,443 in 2025-26, with the objective of improving resource utilisation and strengthening school management.
Other initiatives credited for the improvement include the rollout of CM IMPACT, infrastructure development under Mission Education, Samagra Shiksha and the ADB-funded Supporting Human Capital Development in Meghalaya Project, the establishment of the Meghalaya Teacher Training Academy, expansion of digital governance and school monitoring systems, and focused interventions in foundational literacy, numeracy, inclusive education and school leadership.
Following the previous PGI assessment, the Education Department carried out district-wise reviews of every indicator, held regular monitoring meetings, introduced standard operating procedures, organised capacity-building programmes and implemented targeted action plans to improve weaker-performing indicators and strengthen compliance across schools.
The sharpest improvement was recorded in Governance Processes, where the score more than doubled from 40.5 to 85.6. Infrastructure and Facilities improved from 62.1 to 77.8, while Teacher Education and Training rose from 46.7 to 57.5 and Access increased from 42.8 to 49.1. Learning Outcomes and Quality improved from 31.6 to 47.2, while Equity, the State’s strongest-performing domain, remained consistently high at 208.5.
The Education Minister said the improvement was “not the destination but the beginning of a new phase of educational transformation”, adding that the latest PGI report had also identified learning outcomes and governance processes as areas requiring further attention. He said the Government would continue investing in academic support, teacher development, infrastructure and governance to achieve progressively higher PGI grades.
The Government also acknowledged the contribution of teachers, school heads, students, parents, School Management Committees, District School Education Officers, the Directorates, Samagra Shiksha Mission, SEMAM and partner organisations in achieving the milestone.
Meghalaya climbs two grades in national school education index, exits bottom category
