Bangladesh’s lowest SSC and equivalent examination pass rate in 19 years may be less a sudden “disaster” than the exposure of deeper weaknesses accumulated over years, educationists say, pointing to Covid-era learning losses, teacher shortages, curriculum changes, stricter assessment and prolonged instability in educational institutions.
Only 62.25% of candidates passed this year, down 6.20 percentage points from 68.45% in 2025.
Of 1,829,485 examinees, 690,608 -- or 37.75% -- failed, while GPA-5 achievers fell by 22,356 to 116,676.
Educationists, however, caution against interpreting the result simply as a collapse, arguing that it could provide a more realistic picture of longstanding learning deficiencies.
Educationist Rasheda K Chowdhury said: “It would not be right to call this a disaster. Because this may be the actual picture. We were unable to overcome the setback we suffered after Covid.”
She said corruption and mismanagement had also prevented investments in education from producing the expected results, while instability across the sector over the past two years had compounded the problem.
Rasheda identified shortages of qualified, subject-specific teachers as another critical weakness, particularly outside major cities.
She said: “How can a Bangla teacher teach mathematics? How can they teach English?”
The disparities become particularly stark when schools in Dhaka are compared with those in districts such as Kurigram and Panchagarh, she said, also pointing to inadequate instructors in technical institutions and weak monitoring of classroom teaching.
Education researcher KM Enamul Haque said this year’s candidates entered secondary school in 2020 carrying substantial learning deficits from primary education as schools remained closed for almost two years during Covid.
He said: “They came to secondary education with a major deficit from primary education and have progressed all these years inheriting that learning gap. This year’s results provide major evidence of that.”
Enamul also pointed to tighter assessment practices and disruption surrounding the 2024 student movement, saying prolonged instability may have affected students’ focus on education.
Md Rahmat Ullah, former principal of Kisholoy Girls’ School and College, similarly said stricter evaluation, curriculum changes, Covid-era learning losses and instability had converged.
Rahmat Ullah said: “Students have gone through a situation where they were not focused on studies due to prolonged instability.”
He added that curriculum changes had weakened students’ foundations, while online classes during the pandemic had failed to compensate adequately for lost classroom learning.
Education Minister Dr ANM Ehsanul Haque Milon, meanwhile, defended the assessment process, saying students received the marks their answer scripts deserved.
Milon said: “You can sing with an open heart, but you cannot give marks. The marks that were supposed to be given have been given.”
Taken together, the educationists’ assessments suggest the 62.25% pass rate is not the product of a single bad examination year.
Rather, it may be the cumulative result of learning losses Bangladesh never recovered, shortages it failed to address and instability that further weakened an already strained secondary education system.