NITI Aayog School Education Quality Index 2026: Punjab Overtakes Kerala

Key facts

• Punjab has overtaken Kerala to rank first in the NITI Aayog School Education Quality Index 2026.
• Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains presented a four-year report on changes to Punjab's school system since 2022 in the Vidhan Sabha.
• An initial infrastructure survey after July 2022 found over 8,000 schools without boundary walls, 3,200 schools without functional toilets, and nearly 4 lakh children sitting on the floor.
• Textbooks now reach district headquarters by February 15 and are fully distributed by March 31, compared to reaching schools only in October-November earlier.
• NEET-UG qualifiers from Punjab's government schools rose from 80 in 2021 to 882 in 2026, attributed to the Punjab Academic Coaching for Excellence (PACE) initiative.
• Mission Samarth groups students by learning ability rather than grade and covers nearly 12 lakh students with over 70,000 teachers engaged annually.
• Infrastructure works worth ₹2,638 crore have been carried out across 19,125 government schools, with an additional ₹1,000 crore approved from the World Bank for further upgrades.
• Bains linked the declining government school enrolment partly to the Centre's APAAR ID initiative, which ended duplicate enrolments of single students across multiple schools.