This year the HSC’s overall pass percentage has fallen to 66.64 and the Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid attributed this to the fact that now the answer scripts of students were examined conservatively, avowedly to ensure the quality of education. This might be true because for about the past decade, we witnessed an ever-increasing pass percentage that crossed even 90 per cent in both SSC and HSC exams. But the passed students in those years showed poor quality when they sat for university level admission tests. The education ministry was criticised for the falling quality of education because it only bothered artificially increasing the pass rates as high percentage was wrongly thought of as the only mark of achievement.

But the ministry backtracked and stopped examining answer scripts liberally and as a result of this, this year the highest fails occurred in the last seven years. The education ministry now should know what it ought to do for advancing country’s secondary and higher secondary education. It has to ensure on the answer scripts what the students actually deserve along with increasing the pass percentage as a whole. This is the challenge of the ministry now.

This year the fall in the pass rates has been due to poor performance in arts subjects, along with English and Math, the two subjects all students have to take compulsorily. Like every year this year also the students placed in rural areas could not do well like their urban counterparts. This difference has to be accepted as a real thing because better education facilities will always be available in the urban areas. But the education ministry has to always try for lessening the gap. Increasing this gap would be a recipe for disaster.  That is why efficient teachers especially in English and Math have to be provided to the rurally placed educational institutions. This is a real challenge for the concerned people, but it will have to be done.

The leak of question papers had been a major problem of the country’s public exam system for quite some time. The task to contain it had been formidable and baffled the whole nation, let alone the education ministry. It was only in the last HSC exam we did not hear about serious incidents of question paper leak. It might also be a reason for drop in this year’s pass rates. It is expected the ministry would be able to successfully contain this problem in future. If the government takes up harsh measures and the society stands against this foul trend, we think it will not be as formidable a problem as it seemed.