The results of this year's Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and equivalent examinations have forced us to confront an uncomfortable question about the state of education in Bangladesh. With the pass rate falling to its lowest level in 22 years, a sharp drop in GPA-5 achievers, more institutions producing no successful candidates, and widespread failure in English, the outcome has been widely described as a results debacle.
But perhaps the more important question is not why the results were so poor, but what they reveal about our education system.
Education board officials have said that answer scripts were assessed more rigorously this year and that no additional marks were awarded to inflate results. If this is an accurate reflection of what happened, the poor results may not point to a sudden collapse in academic performance. Rather, they expose weaknesses that have been building up in our education system for years.
Of the 12.40 lakh candidates who sat for the examinations under 11 boards, 5.94 lakh failed. More than 382,000 failed in English and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) alone.
Such a result cannot be blamed on students alone. Families, schools and colleges, teachers, education administrators and the state all share responsibility. The figures point to a much deeper problem than individual students failing to perform in an examination.
For years, we have tended to judge the state of education through pass rates and GPA-5 numbers. Higher figures were celebrated as signs of progress, while lower ones caused public alarm. But these numbers may have hidden a more fundamental question: are students actually learning what they are supposed to learn?
This year's results suggest that many are not.
The widespread failure in English is particularly concerning. English is not just another examination subject. It is an essential skill that affects students' higher education opportunities, employment prospects, and ability to access knowledge in an increasingly connected world.
And this is hardly a new problem. English was also a major reason behind last year's poor SSC results. When students fail to develop basic language skills at the secondary level, those gaps follow them into higher secondary education and beyond.
The reasons are not difficult to find. According to BANBEIS data, many educational institutions do not have dedicated English teachers. Even among those teaching the subject, many lack undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications in English. In the absence of enough subject specialists, teachers from other disciplines are often given short training and assigned to teach English.
It is hardly surprising, then, that many students struggle to develop the language skills expected of them after 12 years of schooling.
More worrying is the apparent lack of a sustained national effort to understand why students continue to perform so poorly in English and what needs to be done about it. Improving their skills will require more than changes to curricula or examination methods. It will mean recruiting qualified teachers, improving classroom teaching and providing students with support from an early stage.
The problem extends beyond English. The fact that many institutions failed to produce even a single successful candidate raises serious questions about the quality of teaching and academic supervision. Schools and colleges are meant to help students learn. When institutions repeatedly fail to ensure even basic academic competence, their performance must be examined. Are there enough qualified teachers? Is classroom teaching properly monitored? Are struggling students receiving the support they need?
Another concern is the growing gap between access to education and actual learning. Bangladesh has made considerable progress in bringing more children into classrooms, and that achievement should not be overlooked. But getting students into schools and colleges is only the first step. If they spend years in classrooms without mastering basic skills, higher enrolment figures alone cannot be called educational success.
The Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly added to the problem. Prolonged school closures caused serious learning losses, and today's students are still dealing with some of those setbacks. But the pandemic cannot explain everything. Many of the weaknesses now becoming visible existed long before Covid-19. The crisis only made them worse.
Our reaction to the results also deserves scrutiny. We have become so accustomed to measuring educational success through examination figures that lower pass rates are automatically seen as failure, while higher ones are celebrated. But higher pass rates do not necessarily mean better learning. If marks are inflated or assessment standards are relaxed, the numbers may look impressive while students continue to fall short of the skills they need.
That is why policymakers must resist the temptation to find quick fixes. Making examinations easier, relaxing assessment standards or awarding additional marks may improve the figures next year, but none of these measures will help students learn better.
The priority should be to improve teaching, strengthen teacher training, ensure regular academic supervision and address learning gaps before students reach public examinations. We also need to assess what students are actually learning throughout their education, rather than relying almost entirely on their performance in one final examination.
The lowest HSC pass rate in 22 years is certainly concerning. But it would be a mistake to dismiss it as a temporary setback or simply an examination debacle. If this year's results genuinely reflect students' abilities, they have revealed something we should have been paying attention to for a long time.
The real tragedy would not be that so many students failed this year. It would be if the education system failed to learn anything from it.
