Commercialisation of education degrades quality

Masum Billah :
After the publication of any public examination I resort to pen to express my opinion. This year I was actually reluctant to write anything as the result would be a forgone conclusion with its common features of increasing pass rate and correspondingly increasing the number of GPA-5 holders, the best institutions in the cities and towns and government’s satisfaction over the results along with appreciating the quality and the educators and researchers’ expressing dissatisfaction over quality, government’ denial of any irregularity let alone corruption in the whole examination management and so on. However, something different happened this year which prompted me to write again. The education minister himself expressed that teachers and schools even the famous institutions have been involved in serious corruption to manipulate results. The bundle of question papers are opened before the usual time of opening and MCQ questions are solved outside the examination halls and sent to the students in the examination halls. It has been proved by the government that better institutions got involved in corruption to get included in the name of 10 or 20 best schools of the country though they maintain regular academic activities. One kind of commercial schools established in 2006 engaged themselves in serious manipulation of public examination results which compelled the better institutors to follow the same path to retain their fame. It’s really a matter of good news that the ministry of education identified the ills of the examination management. Now examination reform has been considered as a serious agendum. Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) has been instrumental to increase the pass percentage without giving any deep idea to the students for more than two decades but it did not receive any attention from the policy makers. MCQ question was introduced in 1992 as a part of examination reform process. To make the situation worse students had to take preparation from the given 500 questions from the so-called ‘question bank’. In 1996, however, a little bit change was brought. Questions were not kept limited in 500 question bank, education boards started setting MCQ questions outside the question bank understanding the magnanimity of the problem and responding to the demands of educators. This year the matter has caught the attention of the government once again. We have been crying for long to think seriously over the inclusion of MCQ in the examination but the deciding authorities did not pay heed to it. So, we must give salute to the government in general and the ministry of education in particular. The ministry has already started discussing the point and reached a decision in principle either to squeeze the number in this item or abolish it in phases.
This year’s SSC and equivalent examinations under 10 education boards were published on 30 May (2015) showing 87.04 percent pass rate, which is 4.30 per cent lower than the last year. A total of 14, 73,594 students from 27,816 institutions across the country took part in SSC and equivalent Dakhil and vocational exams and 12, 82,612 came out successful. The results also show a decline in the number of GPA-5 achievers as a total of 1, 11,901 students obtained GPA-5 this year while the number was 1, 42,276 last year. A total of 11, 08, 683 students from eight general education boards took part in the SSC exams and 9,61,405 of them came out successful with 93,631 achieving GPA-5.
The pass rate in the eight general boards is 86.72 percent which was 92.67 percent in the previous year. A total of 5,095 educational institutions achieved 100 percent pass rate. Although the pass rate fell in general education boards it increased in madrasa education board and technical education board .The pass rate in madrasah education board is 90.20 percent but it was 89.25 percent in 2014. A total of 11,338 students got GPA-5 from madrasa education board. Pass rate in technical education board is 83.01 percent but it was 81.97 percent in the past year. A total of 6,932 students got GPA-5 from vocational institutions. A total of 299 students took part in the exams from eight foreign centers. Of them, 292 came out successful with 72 scoring GPA-5. The male students have outnumbered their female counterpart in terms of pass rate in this year’s SSC or equivalent examinations. A total of 6,65,764 male students passed the examinations with 87.41 percent success rate this year while the number of successful female students is 6,16,854 with 86.64 percent pass rate. A total of 60,370 male students got GPA-5 while the number of female GPA-5 achievers is 51,531. The results, also show a decline in other indicators: The number of failed students increased remarkably and the number of schools with cent percent pass rate decreased, and institutions with zero pass rate rose slightly (47 this year). The introduction of creative questions in the mathematics and higher mathematics this year has also been attributed to the slanting results.
This year examinees had to sit for the examinations through a turbulent situation of the country. The whole country witnessed strike and blockade causing serious misery to the students. Examination dates were being shifted frequently. Students took preparation for one subject but the next day they had to appear in another examination due to political turmoil. Our politicians didn’t think of the plight of our young generation. However, they had to courageously face the whole situation and got a good lesson how to serve the country (?). Education Minister has reminded us of those days “You know that the BNP-led alliance carried out destructive activities across the country in January, February and March. It seriously hampered our preparations to hold the SSC exams. We took up a challenge to complete the exams. We had to reschedule the exams time again and again. We successfully faced the challenge and have been able to publish the results on time.”
For the last couple of years, the government has been maintaining a tradition of publishing SSC results within 60 days after the exams. This year, the results came out within 57 days of the exams. In one sense it can be appreciated but from other point of view it can be said that there remains a question of true judgment. One examiner is a family head, he/she is to conduct five or six classes a day and also remains busy with private tuition or similar kind of duties. He/she has to check the internal examination scripts as well and sometimes may become sick. In the midst of these practical situations, it become very difficult for him/her to give full concentration to check the board examination scripts judiciously within this short time. Another point I must mention here. I frequently visit the training centers where secondary level teachers come to receive training. While in a session titled ‘teaching grammar communicatively’ I met 28 English teachers many of who were Dhaka Education Board examiners. There were several similar kind of passive sentences. Let me give one example’ ‘Garment workers in Bangladesh are paid poor salary” is given in their handout, they are to make it active. Everybody wrote ‘Garment workers in Bangladesh pay poor salary.’ I got astonished to see none of them could identify the ‘subject’ and ‘object’ of the sentence. Here subject is not mentioned. When they are to make it active, they should write either ‘the garment owners/ the authorities pay poor salary to the garment workers.’ None could do it and when I tried to make them understand that here ‘subject’ is not mentioned and this kind of sentence is used in English when acton is more important than who did it.
We teach our students ‘active and passive voice’ to make them familiar with these kind of sentences. But to my utter surprise, none of the teachers could identify it. But they are very much expert in doing the passive sentence like’ rice is eaten by me’ though this kind of passive sentence is rarely used. When subject remains ‘hidden’ they cannot change. So, board authorities must give serious thought to select the examiners. Only twenty years or more teaching experience does not guarantee that someone must be a good examiner.

(Masum Billah is Program Manager: BRAC Education Program, Email: masumbillah65@gmail.com )