New Delhi: The state government of Delhi has woken up from its slumber and has decided to act after the Educational Development Index (EDI) showed that the capital had slipped from its fourth rank to eighth in elementary education.

According to the officials, the state is mulling to take the matter with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA).

According to the MHRD's report on the District Information System for Education website, the upper primary schools were ranked 15 notches down from the position in 2007-08 and were settled on rank 20 due to its poor infrastructure.

Attributing the slip in ratings due to all schools (unaided, private, those under the civic agencies and those run by the state) being clubbed together for the report, the Delhi Education officials also claim that this year's parameters were different from the past along with the data being wrongly computed and compiled.

The Education Minister, Mr. Arvinder Singh Lovely admits that, "Somewhere, there has been a mistake being committed either by us or them. We are studying the report."

The minister further added that, "While being a step ahead, we have opened new schools and separate toilets for girls, then how it is possible that there has been a decrease from last year's number of toilets? Our comparison should be made with other urban metro cities and we should be adjudged on that basis. We have a good pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) which is 1:38. We are in process to find and rectify the mistakes which occurred in the report."

For instance, officials said, the surveyors maintained their list on the number of classrooms and teachers for the primary and upper primary while many principals did not include the library or the common laboratories in the list.

In a similar vein, many yoga and music teachers might also not have been included in the list by the principals.

State Project Director for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan V P Singh feels this has hurt the government's report card.

Singh said that, "The state is mulling to take the matter with MHRD and NUEPA as there are many areas where the state has shown substantial advancement. Area like the quality outcome at upper primary level even after adopting `no detention policy' up to Class VII in government schools is one such landmark."

The report also showed a dip while the 2008-09 report ranked the state on sixth position tumbling down from third with respect to the PTR and qualification of teachers.

The Directorate of Education runs 925 schools and the civic body runs around 1,800 primary schools.

Out of the 4,930 schools covered in the EDI survey, 56% of them were government's.

Lovely announced that presently there are 975 government schools in the capital and the government plans to open 18 more shortly.

Highlighting the state's growth in terms of infrastructure at schools and improved scores in some areas such as for 'schools with drinking water facility' the education department officials said that, "The ranking in 2008-09 is 100 over 99.54 of 2007-08."

Again, the number of common toilets have declined due to the construction of separate toilets for girls and boys.

In 2007-08, the score for schools with common toilets was 90.45; in 2008-09 it was 52.82.

However, in the same period, the score for separate toilets for girls rose by 13.72 to 87.87.