The pass rate in the Secondary School Certificate and equivalent exams has fallen to 87.44 per cent, from a record high of 93.58 per cent last year.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was handed the overall summary and statistics for the 2022 exams by Education Minister Dipu Moni at the Prime Minister's Office on Monday.
Afterwards, the chairmen of the different education boards presented the premier with a more detailed breakdown of the results for their respective divisions.
Later in the day, the education minister presented highlights from the examination results at a media briefing at the International Mother Language Institute in Dhaka.
Nearly two million students will be able to check the results of the public exams afterwards. The results can be collected from educational institutions, the websites of education boards, and via SMS.
Students sat for the exams on Sept 15 after they were delayed by seven months due to the pandemic and floods. The Dinajpur board then rescheduled the tests for four subjects as the question papers were leaked. The situation led to doubts over the publishing of results within the stipulated time, but the concerned parties have managed to clear it.
This year, about 1.6 million students gave the exams under the nine general education boards, while 268,495 students sat for the Dakhil exams under the Madrasa Board and 153,662 sat for the vocational exams under the Technical Education Board.
Of the general education board, 508,236 students were in the science section, 790,091 were in humanities and 301,384 were in business studies.
This year, 367 students gave their exams at eight centres outside Bangladesh.
The number of examinees has dropped by 221,386 since 2021. Last year’s exams were delayed by eight months to November due to the pandemic. Approximately 2.2 million students from 29,060 institutions sat for the exams in 2021.