No negative indicators were found in the results of this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate examination, as the overall pass rate in the country, number of GPA 5 scorers, number of colleges that had 100% pass rate, etc were higher compared to last year’s results.
The number of colleges where no students passed was also less this year, marking another positive indicator.
Last year, the HSC results took a plunge compared to the previous year’s result, and critics accused the newly-introduced creative question system for that.
However, this year the critics have little to complain about.
The combined pass rate this year is 78.33%, which was 74.3% last year. A total of 70,602 students got GPA 5 this year, compared to last year’s 58,197.
A total of 1,147 colleges have the 100% success rate this year, as opposed to 849 colleges last year. The number of colleges with 0% pass is 24, this year, whereas last year it was 25.
A total of 1,129,972 students sat in the HSC examination this year – 127,476 more than the number of examinees last year.
In terms of pass rate, the female students has performed well – 78.86% among female students, 77.86% among male students.
However, in terms of scoring GPA 5, male students are ahead, with 38,787 male students and 31,815 female students achieving the perfect score.
The HSC results was published yesterday. Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid handed over the results to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the morning, and then announced it at a press briefing in the Secretariat in the afternoon.
At the press briefing the first question that the education minister faced after announcing the results was whether the question paper leakage contributed to the higher pass rate this year.
In response, the minister dismissed any such possibilities, saying: “When we learned about any question paper being leaked, we postponed the examination.”
This year, the Dhaka education board had to postpone the English Paper II examination after allegations of question paper leakage. Some other questions were said to be available on social media, though the education minister denied any such allegations.
Students under the Dhaka board scored better in English than last year, with 92.59% of the students passing the subject, as opposed to last year’s 82.30%.
Further countering the claim, the minister said the pass rate was good in 2012 than the previous year. “That time, this question was not raised,” he said.
He said that students performed better and so the result was good.
Surprisingly, the Dhaka board has the highest pass rate in the country, with 84.54%, against 78.55% in Rajshahi, 70.14% in Comilla, 60.58% in Jessore, 70.06% in Chittagong, 71.75% in Barisal, 79.16% in Sylhet, and 74.14% in Dinajpur.
Last year, the pass rate in the Dhaka board was 74.04%, while in 2012 and 2011 it was 81.82% and 76.89%, respectively.
Nahid claimed that students performed well because of some positive steps taken by the government.He said one million teachers were trained, which had a positive impact on the education system.
Nahid said the ministry had selected some colleges where students were not performing well, and additional classes had been arranged for the students, which also contributed to the good result.
“We analysed previous years’ results and found that students mainly perform bad in English and Mathematics, and we arranged for additional classes in those two subjects,” he said.
The Jessore board performed the worst this year, mainly because of bad results in English. Only 65.07% of students passed the subject in Jessore board.
A total of 211 students took the examination from five overseas examination centres. Of them, 153 students passed, with the pass rate of 72.51%. Some 19 students got GPA 5.