News Desk :
Bangladesh did not hold the HSC exams in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the results published by the government on Saturday by averaging scores of previous public tests have brought some relief to nearly 1.4 million students, reports bdnews24.com.
Experts say that the students can now prepare for the next level without anxiety.
Educationists also believe the method used in the assessment of the students without the exams has been the best option under the circumstances.
All students have passed and over 161,000 achieved GPA-5 after the government used a stop-gap system of weighting the scores of the candidates’ JSC and SSC exams to determine the HSC results.
Rasheda K Choudhury, executive director of the Campaign for Popular Education or CAMPE, said the results somehow ended the students’ days of anxiety with the educational institutions shut for nearly a year amid the pandemic.
She would not call the assessment an “auto-pass” because the students had taken two public tests earlier.
The former caretaker government adviser emphasised standards of education instead of results.
“We saw that many students failed university admission tests after achieving Golden GPA [highest grade point average]. So we should raise questions about the quality of education instead of thinking too much about GPA-5,” she said. Rasheda said the results came out through the best possible method at the proper time, although 396 students have missed out on a full GPA-5 in HSC despite achieving the score in JSC, JDC and SSC exams due to the “subject mapping” process applied in determining last year’s results.
“We had to think of an alternative like most other countries did. If we had waited longer, we might have suffered much loss,” Rasheda said.
There was no “ideal alternative” to “subject mapping” method because holding exams amid a pandemic would threaten the health of students, parents and teachers, she said.
Professor M Wahiduzzaman of Dhaka University’s Institute of Education and Research thanked the government for using the ‘subject mapping’ method for the assessment of the HSC examinees considering the pandemic reality.
“It’s not that the assessment was compromised. It’s also a system of evaluation and many systems are used around the world. Not all systems are based on exams,” he said.
Many of the students who had registered for the exams would not eventually be able to take the tests amid the coronavirus crisis which has shuttered the economy as well, Prof Wahiduzzman said.
“Some would have failed. Now everyone will get a certificate. It’s not that they are getting the certificates without studying,” he added. The traditional evaluation method is not perfect either, the Dhaka University teacher believes.
“Do all the teachers evaluate the students equally? Do they check the answer sheets sincerely?” he asked.
