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Poor show in DU admission tests

Wasim Bin Habib and Protik Chakraborty
While pass rates in the SSC and HSC examinations are on the rise, admission tests at Dhaka University this year saw around 83 percent aspirants fail to obtain even pass marks.
Battling for around 6,600 seats of first year honours courses, 2,61,409 candidates took the tests and only 45,278 of them came out successful.
Even the performance of top graders of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams is upsetting.
Around 66 percent of 76,003 GPA-5 holders in the two exams failed to secure pass marks in the DU admission tests, according to university sources. The rate was 62 percent in the previous academic year.
A GPA-5 scorer means the student has obtained 80 percent marks in all subjects on an average.
The admission test results in the previous three academic years - 2011-12 to 2013-14 -- also give a dismal picture with failure rates of 81 percent, 83 percent and 81 percent respectively.
DU sources said most of the admission seekers failed in Bangla and English. Only two out of 1,364 students qualified to be enrolled at the DU English department.
Expressing concern, noted educationists say the admission test results reflect the low quality of education at schools and colleges.
Contacted, Prof Emeritus of DU Serajul Islam Choudhury observed that teachers are failing to teach students properly at secondary and higher secondary levels, leading to deterioration of education quality.
Teachers, he said, are not being recruited on the basis of merit and they are not even getting proper training.
Rasheda K Choudhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education, said a rise in pass rates doesn't necessarily mean improved education.
Especially, she said, there are many questions about the quality of primary education.
"The weakness and lapses at the primary level is reflected in higher education too," she said and suggested finding out the problems through research and ending blame games.
ProfNazrul Islam, former chairman of the University Grants Commission, said time has come to rethink the entire education system seriously.
"The quality of overall teaching and learning at secondary and higher secondary levels is on the wane. More students are passing but few of them are reaching expected level of compe-
tence, " he said when contacted.
In the last three years, there was a steady rise in SSC pass rate. This year, the pass rate in SSC and equivalent exams hit a record high of 91.34 percent, which was 86.37 percent in 2012.
The number of GPA-5 achievers also increased in the last three years. This year, 1,42,276 students got GPA-5 as against 82,212 in 2012.
Only 76 examinees got GPA-5 when the grading system was introduced at SSC level in 2001.
This year's HSC exams saw 70,602 getting GPA-5; it was 61,162 in 2012. Only 20 students scored GPA-5 when the grading system was introduced for the HSC level in 2003.
The pass rate in HSC exams also rose from 76.50 percent in 2012 to 75.74.
In the wake of widespread criticism over the DU test results, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid on Sunday put the blame squarely on the test method.
Terming the admission test "faulty", he said the university authorities intentionally set harder questions so that only a few students could get through.
"Questions were so difficult that only two students passed the test [for enrolment in English department).
This was done deliberately," he told reporters at his secretariat office.
According to the DU authorities, the questions for the tests were meticulously chosen and the students who had better understanding of textbooks and current affairs succeeded.
Prof Hasibur Rashid, convener of the DU online admission committee, said there is no weakness in the admission procedure because all the stages were reviewed by academic and admission committees and academic council.
The DU holds a 120-mark admission test for each of its five units. Admission tests for science group take place under "Ka" unit, humanities under "Kha" and business studies under "Ga" unit. Students from every discipline can take tests under "Gha" and "Cha" units.
The university yesterday announced the results of "Gha” unit in which only 16 percent passed.
“We tried our best to design the test as a comprehensive one so that we can judge the intellectual level of students," DU Vice-Chancellor Prof AAMS Arefin Siddique told The Daily Star last night.
"Our admission procedure is clean and transparent."