The pass rate among boys in the humanities department has fallen sharply in this year's Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and equivalent examinations. An analysis of results from nine general education boards shows that the overall pass rate in the humanities department is 41.14%.
This means nearly 59 out of every 100 students who took the examinations in the department failed.
The findings emerged from an analysis of the 2026 SSC and equivalent examination results published on Monday.
Education Minister Dr ANM Ehsanul Haque Milon officially inaugurated the results at the Ministry of Education's conference room at 10am. Chairmen of all education boards subsequently handed over the results to the education minister.
Among the three departments under the nine general education boards, the humanities department recorded the lowest pass rate among boys. The pass rate for girls in the department was considerably higher at 54.38%, meaning around 46 out of every 100 female humanities students failed.
The gap between the pass rates of boys and girls in the humanities department was 13.24 percentage points, with girls performing significantly better.
Department-wise results show much stronger performance in the science stream. The pass rate among boys in science was 77.39%, compared with 83.70% among girls. In business studies, the pass rates were 59.98% for boys and 69.92% for girls.
Girls outperformed boys in all three departments, with the largest gender gap recorded in the humanities department. The department also had the lowest pass rate among boys.
The overall pass rate also declined this year. Across the nine general education boards, the average pass rate was 64.05%, down from 68.04% last year—a decline of 3.99 percentage points.
Among the general education boards, Dhaka recorded the highest pass rate at 71.63%, followed by Jessore at 66.27%, Comilla at 65.42%, Rajshahi at 63.67%, Barisal at 60.35%, Chittagong at 59.48%, Sylhet at 58.33%, Dinajpur at 58.05% and Mymensingh at 57.39%.
Across all education boards, including madrasa and technical boards, the overall pass rate in the SSC and equivalent examinations was 62.25%, compared with 68.45% last year—a decline of 6.20 percentage points.
A total of 116,676 students secured GPA-5 this year, compared with 139,032 last year. The number of GPA-5 achievers therefore fell by 22,356 in a year.
The results highlight both the particularly low pass rate in the humanities department and the significant gap between the performance of boys and girls in the stream.
