NITI Aayog releases School Education Quality Index (SEQI)

Its prime motive is to bring an ‘outcomes’ focus to education policy by providing States and UTs with a platform to identify their strengths and weaknesses and undertake requisite course corrections or policy interventions.

In line with NITI Aayog’s mandate to foster the spirit of competitive and cooperative federalism, SEQI strives to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and best practices across States and UTs.

Developed through a collaborative process, including key stakeholders such as Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), the World Bank and sector experts, the index consists of 30 critical indicators that assess the delivery of quality education.

These indicators are categorized as below:

Category 1: Outcomes

1. Domain 1: Learning outcomes
2. Domain 2: Access outcomes
3. Domain 3: Infrastructure and facilities for outcomes
4. Domain 4: Equity outcomes

Category 2: Governance processes aiding outcomes

Schooling should result in successful learning outcomes. A credible system of assessment in this regard is crucial to design necessary remedial actions. To ensure the system is geared towards learning, SEQI assigns almost half its weight to learning outcomes. This sends a strong signal across the nation to ensure the focus remains centred on learning outcomes.

States’ and UTs’ performance on Learning Outcomes is driven by their results on the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2017. Their performance on Access Outcomes is primarily driven by enrollment ratios at the secondary level and transition rates from upper-primary to secondary level.

SEQI also included an analysis of States and Union Territories for each indicator under study.

SEQI is envisioned as a dynamic instrument that will continue to evolve. Over time, the relevance of the existing indicators and the availability of data for new indicators will be factored into the index design. In particular, the linkages between policy actions and SEQI indicators will be analyzed to reflect the efforts made by States and UTs to improve school education.