The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mostafa Kamal Majumder

The record results at the Higher Secondary Certificate Examinations this year have come as a pleasant news to all. But underneath the news lies a malaise that is brewing with nobody paying proper attention to and which may explode taking everyone by surprise.

Of the 4 lakh 37 thousand students who passed the examinations with a record 74.85 percentage of success, there will be a significant number of dropouts who will join the ranks of the educated unemployed. The public universities and the university colleges under the National University have capacity for intake of about 1 lakh 96 thousand pupils.

A total of 22,045 students who secured grade point average (GPA-5), there is scope for accommodating only 14,750 in the better known government universities and colleges and a few more thousand others in a limited number of private universities which are doing well.

Poor ones among the GPA-5 achievers again cannot afford education in even the average private universities because of pecuniary reasons. Some of the GPA-5 scoring students would also not get chance to study the subjects of their preference.

Senior university teachers are of the opinion that students are getting good results by answering multiple choice questions (MCQ) which, however, cannot ensure proper IQ test, and some of the high achievers reportedly fail to properly articulate points and are found not scoring similar results at the higher level.

The quality of education is going down also because of the mass proliferation of private coaching or tuition centres which charge fees from students depending on the quality of 'notes’ they supply. Thus, one finds every high achiever to have gone to coaching centres or private tutors for almost all the subjects they appear in.

Most private tutors have again turned education into a business and some of them allegedly do not give marks to pupils that they deserve at school annual examinations if they do not come to their coaching centres. Those going to coaching centres get better marks at school examinations, it is alleged.

Private tutors who are running coaching centres by distributing 'quailty’ notes appear to have taken advantage of the abolition of notebooks at the lower secondary level since the late seventies of the last century. That measure was intended to make pupils read text books instead of relying only on notebooks which used to contain answers to sample questions.

During those days there was competition among publishers to bring out quality notebooks by assigning qualified senior teachers, at relatively cheaper prices. There were also guilds of teachers publishing notebooks.

At present quality of instructions at the schools are suffering because of the predominance of the coaching centres to which teachers give more attention. Concerned people believe that this unhealthy development can be taken proper care of by withdrawing the ban on note books. Even consultation of note books along with the text books used to help students get the chance of at least developing some analytical skills which are completely missing now. Note books distributed from coaching centres are only for memorisation and do not help the development of analytical faculty of students.

The education authorities thus may consider the question of restoring the open competition in the publication of note books for students instead of making them to remain hostage to private coaching centres which also prosper by selling notes.