As per the report, the state's commitment to providing quality education to children can be gauged from its 30th rank in terms of the EDI of 0.481 calculated on the basis of four variables - access, infrastructure, teachers and outcomes.

The state, one of India's largest with a population of 65 million, was at the 29th position in 2005-06 in terms of EDI.

Incidentally, the three states and union territories that scored the highest on the EDI were Kerala (0.772), Pondicherry (0.771) and Delhi (0.757).

As providing educational access to children is not limited to setting up school in every habitation but also is about making the school environment conducive and enabling for children, Madhya Pradesh could not do much on this front, according to the report.

'In the ratio of primary schools to upper primary (middle) schools, Madhya Pradesh has fallen down from 2.8 in 2005-06 to 2.7 in 2006-07. There are only 35,899 middle schools for 95,517 primary schools,' says the DISE report.

Madhya Pradesh has a literacy rate of 64 percent. The dropout rate at the primary school level is 15.6 percent while at the middle school level it is 14.7 percent.