Dhaka, Aug 29 The opposition BNP has expressed solidarity with the protesting medical admission seekers as its leaders believe only GPAs cannot be the benchmark for higher education enrolments, and they smell a rat in the process. "We express our solidarity with them (protesting students). It's an autocratic decision. We are sensing corruption in the admission process," party's National Standing Committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said on Wednesday.
"It's a politically motivated decision," he said while speaking at a discussion organised by pro-BNP Doctors' Association of Bangladesh (DAB) in Dhaka.
Health Minister A F M Rufal Haque announced on Aug 12 that GPAs in the SSC and HSC examinations would be the sole yardstick to ensure, what he said, 'quality admissions' in medical and dental colleges.
The decision triggered a wave of protests from students ready to sit the MBBS and BDS admission tests. A lawyer challenged the decision in the High Court that asked the government to explain its move.
The agitating students resumed their protest on Monday after a two-week break for Eid-ul-Fitr and other vacations. But police charged with batons and briefly detained seven students in Dhaka on the day as they were on their way to submit memorandum at the Prime Minister Office.
Condemning the police attacks on protesting students, Mosharraf Hossain said there was no way to believe that the process would be transparent as the government was already mired in corruption.
"We are sensing that the government is opening the door of corruption by starting the GPA system. Guardians are anxious as nobody can guarantee them there will be no corruption," he said.
He said all universities would take admission test, only medical ones would not. "It will create discrepancies," he said, and that "if they want to change it, they have to do it at all institutions and the students should be informed at least two years ago so that they can prepare themselves mentally."
Mosharraf Hossain, who was also the Health Minister during the last BNP-led alliance government, said there was no debate over the admission test. "I never heard any problem from anybody against it, then why do they want to scrap it?"
Citing SSC and HSC exams he said there was no way to assume that all GPA top graders were of same standard.
"It's impossible as there are different education boards, different questions and difference in examining their answers," he said.
As the health minister said on various occasions that they would take marks from the education boards to select students from similar GPAs, the former minister said, "We started the GPA system as there were arguments against the marks system. So, what do they want, they want to go back to the earlier system?"
"Marks are not revealed and nobody sees it."
He said in the just-scrapped system, GPAs were also evaluated. "We used to take 40 percent from the SSC GPA, 60 percent from the HSC GPA and then additional 100 marks from the MCQ exam."
DAB President Dr AKM Azizul Huq said coaching trade and question paper leakouts were failures of the government.
"They should check those, but instead they scrapped admission tests," he said, apprehending that it would encourage copying in the SSC and HSC exams in future.
Citing an analysis of the Sylhet Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Dr Saiful Islam, a former Dean of the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University in his keynote paper said at least 50 percent students could enrol themselves in that university through the admission tests despite not getting maximum scores in the secondary examinations.
He said nearly 50 percent students got themselves enrolled in medical colleges in second attempt because of their hard work.
"The new decision will shut that opportunity," he said.
Altogether there are 8,493 seats in all medical and dental colleges in Bangladesh.
The number is 2,811 in the 22 government medical colleges and 4,245 in the 53 private ones.
The nine public dental colleges and medical colleges' dental units have 567seats while 14 private dental institutes have 870 seats.
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