Even after the bloody war of nine months, students of just independent Bangladesh had to face board exams. Though the quality of those exams was questionable auto pass was not an option even in 1971.
So, what is actually the reason behind our students of this generation seeing auto pass as their one stop solution.
Let’s start from the start. The phenomenon of auto pass started in our country in the year 2020, when the pandemic hit. Though it could be somewhat justified considering the lack of resources and the life risk of lakhs of students the first time around; how justified was giving auto-promotion for two consecutive years?
The question remains if the evaluation of such an important board exam could be done in any other alternative way.
Without proper exams or classes, just the mere auto pass had a fatal impact on students’ mentality. At first, it might seem like the ideal solution but the decision proved to be deadly in the long run. Why?
Let’s try to find the answer –
Rise of unrealistic demands
After 2020, before every board exam students started to demand an auto-pass based on their self-made logics. They try to establish the fact that they did not get enough time for preparation since they could not attend classes for long.
Again, this went back to the root cause of auto promotion. Because of the initial auto-pass, students did not even have to know the bare minimum about their syllabus, resulting in such low confidence and preparation before board exams.
An unfair selection process during university admission
Every year a huge number of students apply to universities for higher studies. It is logical that the universities would go through a sorting process. Earlier it was justified to consider HSC, SSC or equivalent exams as benchmarks, but when an auto pass is given to students based on previous board results, it becomes unfair for them to be evaluated on those results only.
Many undeserving candidates get chance, whereas many meritorious students become victims of the situation. Ruponti, a student of Jahangirnagar University had the dream of becoming an engineer from childhood. Her pre-engineering preparation was going well. Suddenly the announcement of the auto pass came on 7 October 2020. Then the Bangladesh University of Engineering and technology (BUET) authority decided to set their admission benchmark based on the SSC result. She missed the opportunity to sit for the BUET admission test by just 1 mark. Her childhood dream and the urge to prove herself shattered in a minute. This is the story of many students who lost their fair share of chance in this process.
Self-doubt and decline in morale
The auto pass remark from friends, family, and relatives might take a toll on the mental health of students. Though they were not the one to take the decision, they are facing the consequence. The constant remark and self-proving journey might be very tiring for some.
Loss of resources and academic setback
Students might be taking rigorous preparation, doing coaching classes, giving exams in multiple centres but auto pass could ruin all this in a jiffy. All the time, hard work, money spent go in vain if the deserving and undeserving students get the same result. Some might lose interest in studies. Students could become pessimistic towards their academics affecting their life.
Last but not the least, shortcuts are definitely not the key. The students should not get used to the idea of a shortcut rather than dealing with fair exams.
Students are the future of our society. So, careful precautions should be taken for choosing alternatives to exams during national emergencies or calamities. The authority should try their level best to minimise the adverse effects of the auto pass on students.