HSC pass rate falls to 52 percent, lowest in 22 years; 243,000 fail English alone

About 52 percent of students passed this year's HSC examinations, the lowest rate in 22 years, according to an analysis published after the results were announced.

A total of 594,113 students failed. Of them, 243,000 failed English alone. Another 138,000 failed ICT. The two subjects together account for 382,000 failures.

By comparison, the pass rate in the same examination in 2021 was about 95 percent. The analysis says that in five years the institutions and teachers have not changed; what changed were the rules and instructions for marking scripts.

In the Barisal board, the pass rate fell from 62 percent to 44 percent, a drop of about 17 points. In 2024 the board's pass rate was about 82 percent. In two years the board's pass rate has nearly halved.

The analysis notes that not a single student passed from around 300 institutions across the country.

The analysis points to teaching methods as the reason behind the large number of English failures. English is not a subject for memorisation but a skill, it says, yet students are taught tense, translation and memorised paragraphs rather than the language itself. Many students cannot speak three sentences after studying English for twelve years, the analysis says.

A similar observation is made about ICT. The subject is being taught without computers in many colleges; it is a hands-on subject that cannot be taught without a lab, the analysis says. At least one functional computer lab in every college is described as a minimum condition.

As solutions, the analysis first calls for changing how English is taught from the primary level, with practice in all four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Second, it calls for training English teachers.

Third, it calls for subject-based teacher recruitment in every college through strict competition, not party consideration. Fourth, it proposes identifying weak students in class eleven and arranging separate classes for them, before they fail rather than after.

It also calls for narrowing the quality gap between urban and rural education, ensuring regular classes, and introducing continuous assessment so that a student's weakness is not buried for two years.

The analysis notes that the minister has said a re-examination will be held within a month. But it also asks whether a student who could not learn English in two years will learn it in one month.

The analysis was written by Dr Rauful Alam, a staff scientist at the University of Chicago. In his view, passing students without teaching them is even more dangerous for society; raising the pass rate cannot be the goal, teaching must be the goal.