The Directorate of Primary Education is working to reform the system of Primary Terminal Examination as the competency level of primary schoolchildren still remains low despite a high pass rate, officials concerned said.
“We are working to make the examination competency-based so that students are evaluated properly,” Md Emran, director (monitoring and evaluation division) at the Directorate of Primary Education, told the Dhaka Tribune.
He said students answered competency-based questions in the Primary Terminal Examination 2013, adding that all the questions will be competency-based by 2016.
The DPE is working on the examination reform as its own report shows that most of the fifth grade students are not competent in Bangla and mathematics.
Nearly 75% of fifth graders do not have adequate competence in Bangla while 67% lack competence in mathematics, said a World Bank report released recently.
Although these students are at the end of the primary education cycle, they are still performing at a level lower than what is typical of fifth grade competence, said the report titled “Bangladesh: Education Sector Review”.
The learning level, according to the report, is low at the beginning of primary education with 50% of third graders failing to meet the competency target for mathematics and 33% failed to do so in Bangla.
However, 98.58% students passed the Primary Terminal examination in 2013 while a total of 240,961 students secured GPA-5. The pass rate was 92.34% in 2010, 97.26% in 2011, 97.35% in 2012 and 98.58% in 2013.
Educationists often question the evaluation system as the learning level of the students remains low.
Md Emran, however, defended the examination, saying that the aptitude test is of international standards and unfamiliar to students. “Once we will reform the examination system, things will change,’ he said.
