Dhaka University to relax English Department admission rules

Dhaka University will relax the entry requirements for its English Department after spectacularly failing to get eligible students.

Vice-Chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique said the minimum marks for passing compulsory ‘Elective English’ in ‘Kha’ and ‘Gha’ unit tests has been lowered from 15 to 8.

Only two were found eligible to study English in Bangladesh’s premier public university under the department’s new entry conditions under which candidates must get minimum 30 marks in ‘General English’ and 15 in ‘Elective English’.

But the university authorities, looking to fill every seat, will decide in favour of relaxing its rules on Elective English at a meeting on Oct 18, the vice-chancellor told bdnews24.com.

Those who got minimum 20 marks in General English will be considered. But test takers who did not attempt to answer Elective English will not. They are still required to have a combined score of 200 in SSC and HCS for English and pass marks in all other sections of the admission test.

As few as 17 of the 3,874 who passed ‘Kha’ unit test held on Sept 19 answered Elective English questions. But only two passed.
These 17 candidates will get the chance to study English once the pass mark is lowered to eight.

The department will enrol 150 students, and 125 among them will come from those who sat ‘Kha’ unit tests under the Arts Faculty. The rest 25 will be taken from ‘Gha’ unit test.

The department also set the same requirements for ‘Gha’ unit examinees. The vice-chancellor did not say how many ‘Gha’ unit aspirants met the Elective English requirement, just saying there were enough students to fill the department’s seats.

In another development, the department has proposed to the admissions committee that the Elective English condition be scrapped altogether, a senior teacher told bdnews24.com.

English Department Chair Tahmina Ahmed confirmed that a proposal had been sent to the admissions committee, but did not elaborate on what it was.

‘Kha’ unit interviews will begin from Oct 19.

‘Gha’ unit examinees can submit their subject choice forms from Oct 16 to Oct 23.

Brochure mentioned Elective English

Students were informed about the Elective English requirement for the English Department on the day admissions opened at Dhaka University.

Previously this segment of the question paper was reserved for students from English-medium schools who could answer it instead of the Bengali section if they chose to.

The brochure for ‘Kha’ unit admission, released on Aug 14, said for English Department students would have to answer the Elective English section.

Later, Arts Faculty Dean Sadrul Amin at a press meet on Sept 17, two days before the exam, made the same announcement.

The university has rejected Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid’s claim that the admission tests are ‘faulty’, as have the teachers.

Vice-Chancellor Arefin Siddique said, “There is no place for this made-up controversy over the admission tests. Not all students who passed will get admitted.”

He remarked that the standards of education had been over-generalised. “Not everyone who got GPA-5 has the same level of talent; the university admission test is a demonstration of that.”

“It’s not as though there is no room for improvement in the tests. But it is an acceptable method,” he said.

GPA-5 fails galore

Of the 75,964 students who scored GPA-5 in both SSC and HSC exams and who attended the admission tests to five units of Dhaka University, 50,478 have failed. The fail rate is 66.44 percent.

The breakdown is: in ‘Ka’ unit (science subjects) 23,073 failed out of 35,927, in ‘Kha’ unit (arts) 3,663 out of 4,970, in ‘Ga’ unit (commerce) 5,148 out of 9,595, in ‘Gha’ unit 18,020 out of 24,834, and in ‘Cha’ unit (fine arts) 574 out of 638.

Of the 41,342 ‘Ka’ unit examinees who only got GPA-5 in HSC, 27,813 failed.

In ‘Kha’ unit 9,203 of 11,629 such students failed.

In ‘Ga’ unit the numbers were 12,207 out of 18,845, in ‘Gha’ unit 28,177 out of 36,990 and in ‘Cha’ unit 966 out of 1,048.

The overall pass rates are - in ‘Ka’ unit 21.50 percent, in ‘Kha’ 9.55 percent, in ‘Ga’ 20.61 percent, in ‘Gha’ 16.55 percent and 3.10 percent in ‘Cha’.