The Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exam in Bangladesh is one of the most significant exams, which marks the end of a student’s secondary education, paving the way for higher studies.
This year, the Higher Secondary Certificate exams ran from June 26 to August 19, 2025. Exams took place across 11 education boards: nine general, one Madrasah and one Technical. A total of 1,251,111 students participated in the exam, and out of these, 618,015 were male and 633,096 were female.
Every year, students sit for the Higher Secondary Certificate exams under three main streams such as General, Vocational, and Alim (Madrasah). In 2025, these exams happened in 2,797 centres scattered across 9,314 institutions nationwide. The HSC Results 2025 of all 11 education boards were published yesterday (October 16, 2025).
The overall pass rate stands at 58.83 against 77. 58 per cent last year, meaning around 19 per cent less pass rate than the previous year, which reflects reality, as said by the chairman of the Bangladesh Inter-Education Board Coordination Committee and the Dhaka Education Board.
He continues that they didn’t manufacture the Higher Secondary Certificate results. The real picture has emerged this time. He further says that students have distanced themselves from their study table and urges guardians to reflect on the issue.
Five lac 8 thousand 701 students could not come out successful, while from 202 colleges have not seen even a single student pass. The exam saw 69,097 students achieve a GPA of 5, down by 76,814 from 2024’s 1,45,911.
Dhaka Board chairman says that in previous years, examiners of Higher Secondary Certificate exam were given “sympathetic instructions” when awarding marks, but such practices were absent this year. The board gave no pressure or hints.
The evaluation was accurate, and so the Higher Secondary Certificate results are real. We really appreciate this move of the education boards, as the continuous decline in the quality of education must be halted at least from somewhere. When sympathetic marks are awarded to the students, neither the students, teachers, nor the guardians can assess the real progress of the students.
However, that game was prevailing in our education for years, and a sham good result was exposed before the nation. It distanced the students from their books, classrooms and reading tables. When they pass and get good grades in the public examinations despite playing all the negative roles as students, the quality of education begins to decline, and its repercussions still exist.
Last week, a government college teacher visited my house, and we had a conversation about the students who were absent from class. He said that more than six hundred students study in the intermediate section in their college, but only six to a maximum of twelve students remain in the class.
Worse is that the six or twelve who remain in the class today miss the class the next day. Another six or ten are seen in the class the next day. He expressed his frustration that students are still passing well in the examination. When this is the case, why will they come to the class? Why will they sit at the study table?
Dhaka Board Chairman said that, regarding the Higher Secondary Certificate exam, they did not prepare this year’s question papers. Instead, papers were distributed through an inter-board lottery, such as Barishal’s being used in Dhaka and Rajshahi’s in Cumilla.
That must be another laudable step. Thus, we need to bring some novelties to the national assessment system. Highlighting regional disparities, he says urban areas continue to outperform rural ones.
Meanwhile, Dhaka Metropolitan City records an 84 per cent pass rate. However, such as Shariatpur (42 per cent), Gopalganj (42.28 per cent), Kishoreganj (48.5 per cent), Tangail (44 per cent), and Manikganj (45 per cent) lag far behind. The more rural the area, the more evident the shortage of teachers and educational resources.
It is difficult to minimise, but our efforts should ensure an almost equal situation throughout the country, irrespective of the metropolitan, rural, and urban divide. Nearly half the students failed, which is not what we desire. But these results expose the weaknesses of our education system.
Higher Secondary Certificate exam and its results signify the end of 12 years of schooling, but only one in four of those aged 17-18 years have this privilege, and among them, a select minority with good enough scores will go for higher education.
In this perspective, several questions are frequently asked now. Do the Higher Secondary Certificate results indicate a dip in the quality of instruction and performance of students? If so, what may be the reasons? What can we do to address these questions?
Education boards must play a big role in this area, and they have started, which we expect to continue. Madrasa and Technical education boards, every year, show inflated results. This year, they superseded general education boards.
Can it be plausibly claimed that technical institutions and madrasas are significantly superior when compared with general education institutions in the country? The results raise questions about the validity and reliability of the tests.
The anxiety and questions of parents, concerned citizens and young people themselves about the pass rate, GPA, variations among boards, and overall life prospects point to serious policy and strategy issues in the education system. These call for comprehensive soul-searching at the highest political and administrative levels.
Higher Secondary Certificate exams and the prior SSC exams must provide a credible assessment of student learning and their future educational performance. So far, our national assessment system hardly talks about it. We appreciate the steps taken by our education advisor and education boards to validate the results of public examinations.
We do not know what will happen when the party government occupies the chairs. We entreat the incumbent government to continue all the positive efforts taken by the interim government in the nation’s greater interest, shunning the efforts to gain cheap popularity at the cost of the nation’s irreparable loss.
Our education advisor has rightly said regarding the Higher Secondary Certificate exam results of this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate exam and its equivalent exams that the real crisis of the education system was being hidden to show good results in the public examinations. “Now, we want the culture to be changed.’’
We endorse our views with you and request the students to work hard, gain knowledge, and give more importance to institutional learning than so-called coaching or private tuition. Those must be ad hoc steps, but not the principal ones, as society experiences remorse today.
Students, guardians, teachers, institutions and the state bodies responsible for education must start positive efforts to bring real change in the assessment system. Assessment must be genuine, expose the real picture, and have its validity nationally and globally.
About the Author
Masum Billah works as a President of the English Teachers' Association of Bangladesh (ETAB), Dhaka, Bangladesh. He previously worked as an Education Specialist at BRAC, an international NGO in Bangladesh.