The results of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and equivalent examinations were published three weeks after the government’s initial announcement that they would be made public. This late publication of results poses a pertinent question in the minds of around 19 lakh examinees and all others concerned.
We guess that the new government wanted to evaluate the scripts of the SSC and equivalent examinees, genuinely breaking the previous years’ tradition of awarding inflated marks to students and hiding the real picture of their performance. The students, teachers, guardians, and the education administration of the country, however, were led to believe that assessment at the national level was not important.
Necessarily, the students, with a few exceptions, left their reading tables and began producing rubbish in their examination scripts, which was further encouraged by awarding higher marks without considering or looking at their scripts.
Thus, students were kept in the dark about the situation, so they did not understand what the assessment was, how to write their answers, and consequently could not form a clear idea about any subject or topic. It was actually a nefarious design to cripple the entire nation, and why they did it does not come to our understanding.
Thus, all these brought the standard of education to the bottom layer, but the nation must come out of this mire, and one must start it. We extend our support for the current government’s initiative to begin the process of improving the quality of education.
It, of course, includes a lot of things together. But the effort to assess the examination scripts in the public examination must genuinely be one of the significant steps to make students read, and to warn teachers, institutions, and guardians to be serious about students’ study and assessment, instead of making it just fun.
This year (2026), 1,829,485 candidates appeared in the SSC and equivalent examinations. Out of them, 1,138,897 passed, and 690,608 failed. Quite a large number of students embraced failure, sending a strong signal to all concerned.
The pass rate fell 6.25 percentage points from 68.45% in 2025. The number of GPA-5 achievers also dropped by 22,356, from 139,032 last year to 116,676 this year. The last time the national pass rate was lower was in 2007, when it was 58.36%. That means, after 19 years, the nation has seen the lowest pass percentage in this serious public examination.
After standing at 72.18% in 2008, the pass rate crossed 80% in 2011 and remained above that level for seven consecutive years. It peaked at 91.34% in 2014. The COVID-affected examination of 2021, conducted with fewer subjects and a shortened syllabus, produced an exceptional 93.58% pass rate.
Since then, the trajectory has largely been downward, 87.44% in 2022 and 80.39% in 2023, before a temporary rise to 83.04% in 2024. With full marks and the full syllabus returning, the rate plunged to 68.45% in 2025 and has now fallen further to 62.25%.
The results have brought longstanding weaknesses in English and mathematics. We know there are 71 lessons across sixteen units of the English textbook for students who sit for the SSC examination.
The tradition of the question shows that only 4 or 5 lessons are enough to prepare the students to sit for SSC and equivalent examinations, as questions from the seen passage are set in all the education boards only on these limited lessons, which seriously restricts the development of students’ wide and free ideas to write something of their own using their own vocabulary.
In their second paper, they also just memorise some known topics of paragraphs, essays, applications, and such other items. Even the grammar portions in the form of loose items are repeated continuously, and known and common items are set for the board examinations. If students practice several years ‘ worth of questions, they must get those questions in the examination.
Despite these facts, the humanities group has failed drastically, significantly contributing to the downgrading of this year’s results. This type of teaching English so commercially never promises to develop students’ skills or help acquire any competency in English. Still, they have been made past only by mercy for the last many years.
This year it has suddenly been retarded, and in terms of mathematics, a little bit basic question began setting since last year with which our students and teachers were not familiar. So, they have been startled to see these types of changed results!
Humanities students performed particularly poorly in these two subjects, while science students did relatively better. Among male humanities candidates under the nine general education boards, only 41.14% passed. The rate among female humanities candidates was 54.38%.
Across the nine general education boards, 312 institutions recorded a zero-pass rate, up from 134 last year, an increase of nearly 133%. At the other end, the number of institutions achieving a 100% pass rate fell from 984 to 669.
Dhaka topped the nine general boards with a 71.63% pass rate, while Mymensingh finished at the bottom with 57.39%. Jessore recorded 66.27%, Comilla 65.42%, Rajshahi 63.67%, Barisal 60.35%, Chittagong 59.48%, Sylhet 58.33% and Dinajpur 58.05%.
The Madrasa Education Board recorded a pass rate of 55.49%, while the Technical Education Board stood at 58.20%. This picture clearly shows the geographical disparity in education, which calls for effective action.
To speak the truth, no scientific or convincing analysis is available from our education authorities, as they don’t have any research or analytical cell, either in education boards or in the ministry, to explain the causes, even though I have been advocating for it for a long time through my write-ups.
The 312 institutions where not a single student passed cannot simply be brushed aside. Each of them points to something broken, whether it’s a shortage of qualified teachers, poor infrastructure, weak oversight, or students dealing with hardships that go well beyond the classroom.
The education minister’s promise that “measures” will be taken needs to be followed by real action — a proper school-by-school assessment, more teacher development initiatives, closer monitoring by the education boards, and resources directed at areas where the decline has been hardest hit.
Finally, we salute the elected government for moving away from the practice of awarding marks to students unnecessarily and out of mercy, which seriously undermines the most valuable thing, I mean, assessment. The most heinous crime it is, as it is quite an undue privilege!
However, that has reigned in the field of education throughout the autocratic regime. We cannot afford to retain that tradition any more in the greater interest of our future generation. The new government has shown its stance in the face of the odds that have emerged before the nation as an unexpected reality, giving all concerned a wake-up call.
About the Author
Masum Billah works as the 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.