Soon after Odisha slipped to the 24th spot in Performance Grading Index for schools published by the Ministry of Education, politics has intensified in the State with Opposition BJP and Congress holding the BJD government responsible for the dismal show.
While Opposition BJP and Congress have attributed the Odisha government’s failure as the reason behind the poor performance, BJD claimed the transformation of schools under the 5T initiative is benefitting the students.
“The BJD government is coming up with false statements every day to cover up the failures of its 23 years of governance. The failure of the government is quite evident from the PGI report. The quality of education is deteriorating with each passing day,” BJP leader, Lekhashree Samantsinghar said.
“The 5T transformation never aims at improving the quality of education, rather it only aims at making a secretary-level govt officer a political leader of BJD,” Samantsinghar alleged.
Echoing the same, senior Congress leader Sura Routray said, “The 5T transformation is only limited to painting the schools green. There is a shortage of teachers in schools. Odisha’s nosedive in the PGI ranking is very unfortunate.”
On the other hand, the ruling BJD has refuted the allegations and said the transformation of schools under the 5T initiative has benefitted the students to a large extent.
“If you ask the parents, students, locals, members of the school committees about the transformation, you will get the answer. There were many schools that lacked proper infrastructure. Now with the 5T initiative, these rural schools are at par with institutions in urban areas,” senior BJD leader, Debi Prasad Mishra said.
Odisha, which ranked 10 in the PGI report in 2020-21 academic year, has slipped 14 positions and to the 24th spot this academic session.
The PGI looks at the Indian education system as one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socioeconomic backgrounds.