The Dhaka Education Board chairman announced his resignation Sunday evening after a daylong student protest for the cancellation of ‘discriminatory results’ of this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate and equivalent examinations and their re-evaluation.
‘I will submit my resignation letter to the ministry tomorrow (Monday),’ the board chairman, Professor Tapan Kumar Sarkar, told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· at about 10:00pm on Sunday.
He said that he would also send the students’ demands to cancel their published results and re-evaluation of the HSC results, fully based on subject mapping, to the education ministry on Monday.
A group of students, mostly failed ones or poor result achievers in this year’s HSC exams, on Sunday staged a demonstration and confined the employees of the board for at least nine hours until filing the report at about 10:00pm.
The demonstrators at first demanded the cancellation and re-evaluation of their results, but later they added one more demand – the resignation of the board chairman, witnesses and board officials said.
At least two students were injured during the scuffle with the board staff members as they also allegedly vandalised the board chairman’s office during their protest.
The board chairman told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that the students had kept them confined in the office since 1:00pm.
He said that they were kept confined till 10:00pm on Sunday, when this report was being filed.
On Sunday afternoon, he told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that there was no scope to change the results as it was the decision of the education ministry and they would form a probe committee over the incident soon.
He said in the evening that he would submit his resignation letter to the ministry as per the demand of the protesting students.
‘I also told them (student protesters) to send their other demands to us so that we can also send all their demands to the ministry,’ he said. Â
Members of the army and the police were present at the board premises until filing the report. They were trying to calm the students.
This year’s HSC and equivalent examinations’ results were published on October 15. On October 14, some students came to the board demanding an ‘auto-pass’ in their HSC examination.
The examinations began on June 30 and, after holding examinations on seven subjects, the interim government on August 20 cancelled the remaining six examinations due to the students’ protest.
The results of the examinations were published using the subject mapping method on the cancelled subjects, based on the students’ results in the Secondary School Certificate and equivalent examinations, and through the usual evaluation of answer papers of the seven exams.
Under the banner of ‘HSC Batch 2024’, a group of students started a rally in front of the board at about 12:30pm on Sunday.
They claimed that the recent HSC results following the subject mapping method for only cancelled exams were discriminatory.
They urged the authorities to re-evaluate the results by using the subject mapping method on all subjects.
At about 1:00pm, the students entered the board premises by breaking open the main gate.
Students claimed that some of their fellows came under attack by the board staffs and plainclothes police.
Chawk Bazar police station officer-in-charge claimed that the board staff and police tried to prevent students from entering the office forcibly.
‘The stairs of the building were narrow,’ he said, adding, ‘they might be injured during entering into the office forcibly.’
The officer-in-charge also said that he saw two injured students.
Professor Tapan Kumar Sarkar also said that some outsiders and some students vandalised his office when some of the students got injured by themselves.
Police stop a procession brought out, demanding job by the teachers registered under the Non-Government Teachers Registration and Certification Authority, on Topkhana Road in the capital on Sunday. — Sony Ramani