There is a danger of reducing the protest surrounding this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and equivalent examinations to youthful resentment. We cannot ignore the legitimacy of the candidates’ grievances. That candidates waded through knee-to-waist-deep floodwaters amid torrential rain to reach their exam centres in Dhaka and several other districts when the Chattogram education board postponed the exams was indeed a red flag. The administrative decision appeared to be extremely rigid and devoid of empathy and care. A private comment by the education minister in which he allegedly compared the candidates to broiler chicken afraid of water aggravated the situation further.

HSC is a life-changing terminal examination. Performances in this exam determine progression to higher education or career velocity. The government decided to change the assessment tools to ensure that the exams reflect the students’ true aptitude. Students found that they were not properly oriented towards these prescribed changes. The inclement weather added some “construct-irrelevant” factors—external and unrelated conditions that influence the testing of the knowledge or skillsets.

High-stakes examinations like the HSC demand special care. In an age when a mobile phone can give accurate weather predictions, the claim that a group of competent authorities misread the monsoon does not hold water. Monday’s exam fiasco exposed the fact that our public examination system lacks an emergency protocol that can differentiate among regions, centres and individual candidates without improvising only after public anger erupts.

Police block the protesting HSC examinees as they marched towards the education ministry in Dhaka on July 15, 2026. PHOTO: PALASH KHAN

The crisis became apparent when the education minister admitted in parliament that some questions of Physics First Paper exam were erroneous, and full marks would be given to examinees who attempted to answer them. This necessary corrective step does not offer a complete psychometric remedy. A candidate may have spent valuable time in solving the problems. Another candidate may have skipped it recognising the improbability. Even if compensatory marks are given, the error has already affected the examination time, the candidates’ confidence and concentration. A show-cause notice has been served to four teachers responsible for crafting and moderating the questions. This is a welcome move as it will insist on high standards for the exam setters.

There is a seductive political dimension to the problem. Already, we have heard the relevant authorities blaming the previous government for lowering standards through “auto-pass,” shortened syllabuses, and inflated results. The new government is reportedly redressing the wrong by restoring standards through stricter examinations. There is some truth in it. During and after the Covid pandemic, syllabuses were trimmed. In 2024, the then government yielded to student pressure and cancelled some HSC examinations and allowed subject mapping. The process eroded the integrity and comparability of public examinations. The consequences of those concessions and demands for auto-pass are now falling apart at the seams.

The new government is within its rights to restore credibility of certification. But standards cannot be raised simply by making questions unexpectedly difficult or changing patterns without adequate preparation. It is unfair for high-stakes examinations to demand skills that students were not explicitly prepared to develop during their course of study.

The government must begin changes with curricula, textbooks, classroom teaching, teacher development, and formative assessment. The curriculum must take the students’ experience into its purview to relate their educational journey with the authentic experiences. Simply mentioning that the curriculum will be employment-driven is missing the big picture of the psychosocial formative process of our students.

The real problem is that the proposed changes were not piloted before implementation. For instance, the move towards a common question papers to standardise assessment across different education boards did not factor in the possibility of a defective question that can possibly affect the entire national cohort. As a result, “One country, one question paper” has become “one error, one national crisis.”

The situation was poorly handled as student reactions got out of control, bringing city life to a halt for nearly two days. Parts of the movement moved rapidly from specific remedies to the demand for the education minister’s resignation. Other groups of protesting students withdrew the resignation demand and returned to six substantive proposals concerning retests, marking, scheduling, and examination conditions. This divergence matters. It shows that there was no single, coherent student position. There were aggrieved examinees, spontaneous participants, organised coordinators, and political opportunists seeking to exploit the conflict.

With the memory of the July uprising still fresh in our memories, the young people used the HSC exams as a pivot for their collective agency. The currency is democratically valuable. However, the danger lies not in the students learning that protest can change policy, but with the idea that every administrative dispute can be converted into an ouster movement. The interpretation of democratic citizenship as conspiracy does not help the situation either.

When resignation becomes the first available language of accountability for protesters, institutions lose the opportunity to investigate, correct and learn. Conversely, when authorities dismiss protesters as manipulated or politically motivated, they turn solvable grievances into struggles over dignity.

At another level, if teachers or government officials are made political scapegoats, the planned innovation in the education sector will be stalled. If students get the taste of manipulating the outcome of their tests through street pressure, examiners may become defensive. Question setters may avoid intellectually demanding items. The ultimate casualty would be public confidence in the HSC certificate.

Bangladesh needs neither an “easy examination” culture nor a “shock treatment” culture. It needs a re-assessment of the assessment system. An autonomous national assessment council with expertise in curriculum alignment, psychometrics, subject assessment, and examination security can be created. Major changes in question design should be piloted, communicated to teachers, and announced at least one academic cycle in advance. Sample papers and marking criteria should accompany any significant reform.

Students, too, must distinguish protest from coercion. They have the right to demand fairness, but they should not think of every difficult test as evidence of oppression or as a reason to destabilise the sector. The government must resist both administrative arrogance and indiscriminate conspiracy rhetoric.

The lesson here is not that standards should be abandoned. Genuine standards are built through consistency, transparency, and care. An examination can be rigorous without being cruel. The rain exposed more than a drainage failure. It exposed a deficit of care leading to a confrontational culture. Repairing that culture will require maturity on our parts before we expect the same from the students.

Dr Shamsad Mortuza is vice-chancellor at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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