Examinees beaming with joy, educational institutions holding celebrations, parents sharing sweets, and teachers proudly stating the success of their students. All of this adds up to one common image in our country: results of board examinations of the national curriculum in our country. Of all the board exams students have to sit for, Higher Secondary Certificate or HSC examination is of the highest level and most esteemed one. On February 13, the results of the HSC 2021 examination were published. Compared to past years' results, 2020 and 2021 had almost double the number of GPA-5s and passed students in the HSC examination. Yet in plain eyes, there is a stark contrast in how the results have been embraced by the students, teachers, parents, and the entire nation in these two years.
The examinees of HSC 2020 and 2021 had to endure a great deal of mental pressure and uncertainty for a long period. Amid all the chaos, what is in their mind regarding the whole scenario? When asked, Prangon Sarwar, HSC examinee from Notre Dame College, shared his opinion, "Most of my peers and classmates have been pretty sure of their results, and quite frankly, so was I. Since we'd known that our past SSC results were to be integrated into HSC, those of us who had a good SSC result did not worry much about this."
He also thinks that people took this year's result as a bigger deal compared to the one of 2020 because there were in-person examinations this time and people, in general, adopted a lot with the Covid scenario by that time. He added, "It's not only Covid that caused a smaller celebration, but also people's negative perception about this change in the examination process."
Another examinee from Holy Cross College, Mayesha Momtaz, considered the examination as a big thing and was happy with her results. However, she too agreed that there were a lot of visible differences. The examination consisted of six exams of three subjects and the rest was the subject mapping of previous board exams.
About the limited celebrations of this year's results, Mayesha considered the sudden Omicron surge to be the prime reason. She said, "Schools and colleges were officially closed for the pandemic. So, we wondered if we would be able to celebrate like others."
A lecturer from a reputed college in Dhaka added some unique perspectives to the discussion. He portrayed that the uncertainty of examination procedure, time of the exam being held, and the "auto-pass" and "short-exam" to recover from the scenario made the educational institutions, as well as the teachers, lose interest in the whole process for the past two years. The results were predictable and most of the teachers were having a hard time coping with the online education system. He also added, "Teachers lost their personal interest to await the results of their students this time since it could be easily predicted. For that reason, institutional celebrations were not really eye-catchy this year."
HSC examination in our country was traditionally held during March-April. But last year, after all the dangerous waves of the pandemic, finally in December, a short-syllabus exam took place. This lag in the usual timeline posed pressure on the public and private universities of the country as they were preparing for their intake. As the previously mentioned lecturer said, "Many students pushed the idea of the HSC examination away and started preparing for the admission test. Since the overall HSC result was good beyond expectations, students are now worried about whether they can be admitted to a good university."
For the examinees, utmost support should be provided as much as possible from all our ends because this scenario of the HSC examination was not faced by anyone before the pandemic. We can only hope that the entire education system recovers from the disruptions caused by the pandemic at every level, most importantly for the crucial examination of HSC in Bangladesh.
The relentless efforts of the government, education boards, colleges, teachers, parents, and students can undoubtedly make the procedure stringent and open room for heartfelt celebration nationwide.
The writer is a third-year BBA student at IBA, University of Dhaka.
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