Over 2.74 lakh of the 13,65,789 students who would automatically pass this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate and equivalent examinations might not get the opportunity to enrol at any university, college or polytechnic institute for lack of seat capacity for all the students.    

University Grants Commission of Bangladesh and Bangladesh Technical Education Board data shows that a total of 10.91 lakh seats, including 2.74 lakhs at the polytechnic institutes, would be available in the coming academic session against 13.65 lakh candidates.

At least 1.10 lakh HSC candidates would get GPA 5 as the government, while scrapping the public exam in October owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, decided to promote the candidates based on the results of their Secondary School Certificate and Junior School Certificate exams, educationists said.

They said that admission tests at the universities and colleges would be difficult to hold and be very competitive for the students as their future would depend on the admission tests to be held over just a few hours.

Many of them would thus be forced to enrol at substandard but expensive private universities and private polytechnic institutes, educationists said.

And many others would be forced to drop out or leave the country enrolling at institutions abroad, they added.

‘The decision on announcing 100 per cent pass in the HSC examination due to the COVID-19 outbreak will hamper the admission and future of many students though I don’t know about any alternative amid the COVID-19 outbreak,’ Dhaka University professor emeritus Serajul Islam Choudhury told on Tuesday.

‘Now the government should find the best possible solution to the problem in the greater interest of the future of the students and the nation as well,’ he said.

Dhaka Education Board chairman Ziaul Haque, also the member secretary of the government-formed committee for ascertaining the results of the candidates based on their SSC and JSC results, said that they would try their level best to work out rational results so that the advantages that these candidates were getting for the COVID-19 outbreak would not create problems for their previous and following batches.

‘There are also many irregular students who failed last year’s exam and there are some private candidates as well,’ he said, adding that the task would be challenging to ensure the interest of everybody.

Data of the country’s 11 education boards showed that  2,66,501 of the 13,65,789 HSC candidates are irregular, of whom 1,60,929 failed in one subject last year, 54,224 failed in two subjects and 51,348 failed in more than two subjects.

Besides, there are 3,390 private candidates and 16,727 candidates registered for the improvement exam.

The SSC results of 2018 and the JSC results of 2016, based on which the HSC results of 10,79,171  regular candidates would be determined, showed that 1,10,629 students secured GPA 5 in their SSC and 2,47,588 students GPA 5 in their JSC exam.

So, at least 1,10,629 students would secure GPA 5 in this year’s HSC exam though 47,286 students got GPA 5 in the HSC exam held in 2019 and 29,262 students got GPA 5 in the previous year, board officials said.

They said that maximum 75 per cent of the students had passed the HSC exam in the previous years while 100 per cent of the students would pass this year’s exam and their number would be higher compared to the previous years.

UGC member Muhammad Alamgir said that all the public and private universities and their subordinating colleges and institutions had an estimated 8.5 lakh seats at the entry level.

‘In the previous years, many seats at the private universities and private colleges under the national university remained vacant but it might not happen so this year,’ he said.

Bangladesh Technical Education Board officials and teachers of public and private polytechnic institutes have hoped that they would get more students at the 624 polytechnic institutes which have 2.74 lakh seats.

In the previous years, they said, the maximum seats at such institutions used to remain vacant.

Vice-chancellors of several public universities said that they would have to struggle to hold the admission test for such a huge number of candidates and to pick the best ones from among them.

The task would be even more challenging as the education boards would likely give them average marks.

They said that the government could arrange a central admission test under the UGC leadership to select students for admission to the universities as per their respective admission procedure.

Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology vice-chancellor Satya Prasad Majumder and Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology VC Rafikul Islam said that they would face problems in selecting the primary candidates for the admission.