Visually impaired Tahmina Akter Moumi has secured a GPA-5 in this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations, achieving a notable result amid a disappointing overall performance by students under the Sylhet Education Board.

Nearly half of the candidates under the board failed this year, while the number of GPA-5 achievers also declined.

Moumi is a student of Sylhet Government Madan Mohan College. She is the daughter of Abdul Ahad and Amina Akter Pushpa of Jaifarnagar village in Juri upazila of Moulvibazar.

Expressing satisfaction with her result, Moumi said the support and cooperation of others had been instrumental in her success.

“I have achieved this success because of everyone’s support. I am grateful to all of them,” she said.

Explaining how she took the examinations, Moumi said visually impaired candidates were allowed to use scribes who had to be two to three years junior to them.

“The scribe read out the questions to me, and I dictated the answers. The scribe then wrote them on the answer scripts,” she said.

Moumi was assisted by Pallab Roy, a student who had passed the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination from Haji Abdus Sattar High School.

Moumi is also a residential student at the Green Disabled Foundation (GDF), an organisation working with visually impaired people in Sylhet.

Baizid Ahmed Khan, executive director of GDF, said Moumi had been living at the organisation since Class One.

“We are extremely happy and proud of her achievement,” he said.