The pass rates in public examinations are increasing gradually only because the quality of education has gone up, the education minister has claimed.
Nurul Islam Nahid made the assertion at the press briefing on the HSC results published on Wednesday.
It was an apparent response to the critics who have been saying the education quality was not improving despite the uptrend in pass rate.
He said, “We don’t have any problems with the students if they can manage to achieve 100 percent pass rate.”
“We cannot force anyone to pass or fail.”
The success rate at this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate and equivalent examinations has gone up to 78.33 percent against last year’s 74.30 percent.
A total of 70,602 students have scored GPA 5 this year.
No student sits the exams to fail, the minister said.
“The education quality has improved. We have taken better education to the rural areas. Results at the institutions in rural areas are also better.”
“Many question the higher pass rate but we don’t take that negatively. Because no-one sends their child to educational institutions to fail.”
Nahid thought the pass rate would have been higher if the students had studied better under the care of better teachers.
He said the results were totally free of bias, as there was no scope to cheat because of creative questions.
This year, 23 subjects in the HSC exams had such question papers.
“Our extra efforts have reduced the number of institutions with 100 percent fail rate. The number will go down further in future,” Nahid said.
No students from 24 institutions passed this year’s exams. The number was 25 last year.
Nahid, who is the education affairs secretary of the ruling Awami League, claimed the quality of education was improving each year, resulting in a higher pass rate.
The minister said all students who have cleared the HSC exams would easily get admission to higher educational institutions.
There was stability now in the announcement of the schedule and results of public exams, he said.
But he did admit that preventing dropouts and improving education quality was still a challenge.
“We are trying to overcome them.”
Asked whether the question paper leak was behind the higher pass rate in the Dhaka board, Nahid brushed off the suggestion.
“Fresh questions were set for tests in the subjects for which question papers had allegedly been leaked.”
“The alleged leak did not have any effect on the results,” the minister said.
The Dhaka board, with 84.54 percent, recorded the highest pass rate among the eight education boards in the country.
The government, facing much criticism, called off this years’ English second paper examination of the HSC following allegations of questions being divulged. The test was rescheduled.
A probe committee formed to investigate the malpractice has recently finalised its report.
Questions of other subjects, including Chemistry and Mathematics, had also been allegedly revealed. But the government rejected the allegations.
Source: Bd news24
