Since the late 1980s, Bangladesh’s SSC pass rate has seen major fluctuations, reflecting not only student performance but also suggesting the influence of political realities, exam reforms, marking practices, and education policies.
The SSC pass rate has swung from a low of 31.73 percent in 1990 to a pandemic‑era peak of 94.08 percent in 2021, before sliding to a 19‑year low of 64 percent this year.
Education experts largely attributed the fluctuations to inconsistent education reforms over the years.
Veteran teachers’ leader and academic Mohammad Mazharul Hannan said one of the major weaknesses of Bangladesh’s examination system has been the tendency to introduce reforms without adequate preparation and follow-up.
“Our policies do not come in a continuous manner; they are piecemeal. In any country, the education system develops gradually and maintains continuity. But here that continuity is not really maintained. Different people come and think in their own way, and policy is shaped that way,” he said.
MCQ EXPERIMENT
The SSC pass rate remained relatively low through much of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period marked by political instability and repeated changes in examination approaches.
A major reform came in 1992 with the introduction of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) based on a 500-question question bank. The move was intended to modernise assessment, but education experts say the system was introduced before teachers were adequately prepared.
The pass rate stood at 64.95 percent in 1991, but fell to 61.60 percent in 1992 after the new system was introduced and remained almost unchanged at 61.09 percent in 1993.
Former director of Dhaka University’s Institute of Education and Research, Prof Siddiqur Rahman, recalled that the first years under the new method produced disappointing results.
“There were many reasons for this. One major reason was that teachers themselves had little understanding of objective-type questions. As the teachers lacked proper knowledge, they could not prepare students adequately,” he said.
“Whenever you want to do something, you have to prepare the ground. Otherwise, it will not succeed,” he added.
In 1996, the question-bank system was abandoned while the MCQ format was retained. That year, the pass rate dropped sharply to 42.61 percent from 73.20 percent the previous year.
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CHANGING EVALUATIONS
Another major change came in 2001 when the Grade Point Average (GPA) system replaced the traditional division-based grading method.
That year, the pass rate fell to 35.22 percent -- one of the lowest in the history of the examination.
The following years saw significant fluctuations in pass rates, which education officials often linked to anti-cheating campaigns and tighter examination controls.
In 2003, authorities attributed a sharp decline in results to stricter action against cheating, with the pass rate falling to 35.91 percent. The following year, it rebounded to 48.03 percent after stricter screening of candidates via test exams prior to SSC exams and changes in result calculation, including the inclusion of marks from the fourth subject.
CREATIVE QUESTIONS
A major overhaul arrived in 2010 with the introduction of creative-question assessments, a reform designed to reduce rote learning and encourage analytical thinking.
The year the system was introduced, the pass rate jumped to 78 percent from 67 percent a year earlier. It continued rising in subsequent years, reaching nearly 93 percent in 2014, the highest rate recorded before the pandemic.
But both experts argue the reform failed to achieve its intended objective.
Siddiqur said the system gradually became mechanical rather than genuinely creative.
“Students memorised answers from notebooks and reproduced them. That is not creative learning.”
He added that teachers frequently relied on guidebooks and formulaic approaches instead of encouraging independent thinking.
The creative question system ultimately did not achieve its objective of moving students away from rote learning,” he said.
The government later reduced the number of MCQ questions and introduced standardised answer-script evaluation.
The changes coincided with another period of declining results.
Education officials at the time said the standardisation initiative was intended to ensure more accurate and uniform assessment across examination boards.
COVID-19 AFTERMATH
The next major disruption came with the Covid pandemic.
In 2021, students sat examinations under a radically altered system involving fewer subjects, shortened syllabuses, and reduced marks. The pass rate surged to 94.08 percent, one of the highest levels in the country’s history.
As normal examinations gradually resumed, pass rates began falling again. The rate dropped to 88.10 percent in 2022 and then to 80.94 percent in 2023.
Officials linked the decline to the restoration of full examinations, weaker performance in mathematics and English, and the impact of major floods in Sylhet that disrupted learning for thousands of students.
POLITICAL TRANSITIONS
Political changeovers and periods of national upheaval also appear to coincide with some of the sharpest swings in SSC results, although education experts caution against drawing simple cause-and-effect conclusions.
The 1990 SSC examination, held amid the peak of the anti-dictatorship movement against Hussain Muhammad Ershad, recorded a pass rate of just about 32 percent. The following year, after the BNP came to power through the country’s first parliamentary election in years, the pass rate jumped dramatically to 65 percent.
A similar pattern emerged after later political transitions. In 2008, the final year of the military-backed caretaker government, the pass rate rose sharply to 70.81 percent from 57.37 percent a year earlier. However, in 2009, the first year of the Awami League government, it fell to 67.41 percent.
Education board officials at the time said the decline was a result of a stricter, almost cheating-free examination environment and weaker performance in English and mathematics.
Prof Siddiqur Rahman suggested that marking practices often changed when new governments took office.
“When a new government comes in, at first they usually do not allow liberal marking or grace marks. But when they see that low pass percentages are hurting their popularity, gradually they soften their stance,” he said.
WHY TRIALS FAIL
The sharp decline in results in 2025 (68 percent) and another fall in 2026 (64 percent) reignited debate about whether previous results had accurately reflected student performance.
Prof Siddiqur argued that sustainable reform required far more than introducing new examination formats.
“Simply introducing a system is not enough. It requires follow-up, identifying flaws, and correcting them. No such measures were taken. Often head examiners or other examiners were instructed to award marks just for writing something, whether right or wrong. That is not proper evaluation,” he said.
Education requires placing the right person in the right place, he said. When a person is brought into exam reform, they must be given intensive training and properly engaged.
“But because qualified people were not placed in the right positions, the systems failed,” he said.
