DPE Under Fire Again, Scholarship Results Leaked Online
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Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) is facing repeated controversy regarding the evaluation of meritorious students for primary scholarships.
In 2023, several students received talent pool scholarships despite not even sitting for the examination. Instances occurred where students with the same roll number were awarded scholarships from two different districts.
While those results were suspended within four hours of their announcement, a new scandal has emerged: the results have been leaked online before the official formal announcement.
Despite an earlier announcement, the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education was unable to officially release the scholarship results on Thursday.
According to DPE officials, the final results for the Primary Scholarship Exam 2025 were prepared on 8 July. Assistant Maintenance Engineer Mehtab Kayes was assigned the task of creating the necessary website links for the release.
Authorities had issued explicit instructions that the results must not be uploaded to the live server under any circumstances before the formal announcement.
However, defying these orders, the results for nine districts under the Dhaka division were uploaded to those links around 10 am on Thursday.
As soon as the links became active, they were accessed by users and parents, spreading rapidly across social media. This incident has severely compromised the confidentiality and IT security of the result publication.
A report from the DPE’s Information and Communication Technology division revealed that government security protocols for uploading data to a live server were completely ignored.
In response, government officials have formed a three-member investigation committee to determine the cause of the incident. The committee has been directed to submit its findings within the next three working days.
The 2023 Result Crisis
This is not the first major failure for the DPE regarding scholarship results. In February 2023, the publication of the 2022 scholarship results caused nationwide chaos. Due to a severe software coding error at that time, many students who did not take the exam were awarded talent pool scholarships.
In turn of events, students with identical roll numbers were shown as passing from both the Jhenaidah and Sunamganj districts.
At the time, the then state minister for Primary and Mass Education officially announced the results at a press conference at the Secretariat.
Immediately following the announcement, reports of bizarre and unbelievable errors began pouring in from across the country. Facing intense criticism, the government was forced to suspend the results just four hours after publication.
Two years later, similar negligence and lack of coordination within the IT department have once again tarnished the image of the entire directorate.
The biggest failure in 2023 involved absent students appearing on the merit list. Because the code numbers for two different students in Jhenaidah and Sunamganj became identical, the same roll number appeared to win scholarships in two different districts.
Many school teachers complained that their most meritorious students, who were certain to perform well, were excluded from the list, while students with lower marks or those who were absent received scholarships.
How the Disaster Occurred
Officials said this was not manual fraud or a deliberate crime, but rather extreme negligence by the DPE IT team.
Since the Primary Education Completion Examination (PECE) had not been held for three years, the results were processed using a new software that utilized code formats from an older database.
When Upazila-based code numbers were input into the central software, duplicate codes occurred for multiple students.
The committee failed to perform the basic duty of cross-checking for software bugs or errors before the final upload.
Families who had celebrated were left in despair by evening when the news of the suspension broke. Parents expressed intense anger on social media over playing with the mental state of young children.
Following the nationwide uproar, the Director General of the DPE issued an emergency notice expressing regret and temporarily suspending the results to fix the errors.
A committee was formed to investigate, and after 36 hours of closed-door re-evaluation, the Ministry was forced to re-release the corrected and accurate results.
Historical Context
The primary scholarship exam was first introduced in 1973 to encourage talented students. After running for four decades, the separate exam was stopped in 2009 following the introduction of the PECE, and scholarships were instead awarded based on PECE results.
However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the new curriculum, the PECE was canceled, leading to the experimental reintroduction of a separate scholarship exam in 2022 after a 13-year hiatus. That year’s results sparked extreme controversy.
Director General of DPE Shahina Ferdousi told Agamir Somoy that the incident of results appearing online before the official announcement is being treated with extreme seriousness. A preliminary investigation has highlighted IT deficiencies and negligence.
She added, “A three-member investigation committee has been formed to look into how this happened and whether there was any negligence of duty by anyone. The committee has been asked to submit the report quickly. After that, we will decide on the next course of action.”
Shahina is reluctant to compare this to the 2023 incident, saying, “The incident that year was a different matter which does not match this time.”
