The overall pass rate of Higher Secondary Certificate examinees under eight General Education Boards dropped by more than 5 percentage points to 66.84 percent. The number of students having achieved the highest grade — GPA 5 — also came down to 33,242 from last year’s 48,950.
The combined pass rate under all the 10 Education Boards, including Madrasa and Technical Boards, also declined to 68.91 percent from last year’s 74.70 percent. Similarly, GPA-5 achievers under the 10 Boards fell to 37,969 from last year’s 58,276.
The method named “standardisation of answer scripts” was first introduced for Secondary School Certificate examinees this year. And subsequently, the results showed a significant fall in the pass rate. Explaining the new evaluation method, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said Chief Examiners in consultation with senior examiners set model answers of the questions. Considering the model answers as the standard, the examiners checked the answer scripts.
The measure was taken following a research conducted by the Bangladesh Examination Development Unit on the existing evaluating system. The usual practice was that the listed examiners first collected scripts from the Boards, checked those and returned to the Boards. There was no monitoring mechanism or any specific rule to check the scripts.
It is unbelievable that no specific method of script checking existed prior to this year’s examinations. In most examinations of this nature held internationally like O Levels and IB examiners are given precise instructions on how to grade. It’s difficult to believe that the pass grade fell by 5 percent simply because the grading was standardized.
The pass ratio of 65 percent is remarkable — but of them how many are really suited to studying in tertiary education. If we take the DU standard then on average almost 9-10 percent of students pass their Entrance Exams — a much more realistic number of students who are actually capable of studying at the higher levels.
Young people must be encouraged to go into technical and vocational education more. Establishment of new technical universities or vocational institutes is a step in the right direction. We can follow countries like Finland where only teachers are encouraged to go for Masters or PhDs. Candidates who want to become civil servants are allowed to do their Bachelor’s. Such a system will put lesser pressure on our colleges and on our students and provide more competent people are technically endowed with knowledge.
