Error-filled question papers

A look at the English-version primary terminal question papers for fifth graders for Bangladesh and Global Studies subject—which a news report published in this daily yesterday has revealed—confirms our worst fears about the state of education in the country. 

One of the questions was: "What is happened in the people of this country as a result of 'divide and rule' policy of British?" Apart from the glaring grammatical mistakes in the question, all four answer options to this "multiple choice question" were correct but the students only had to pick one. 

One gets the impression that children as old as 11 were first supposed to decode the unintelligible questions and the multiple choices filled with grammatical errors and then form an answer to questions which are far beyond their understanding in the first place. We would like to know the credentials of those responsible for writing these question papers. Because, if this is any sign of the condition of educators in the country, is there hope of churning out quality students? As it is, our education system seems to always be in the news for the wrong reasons—whether it is question paper leaks or problematic changes to textbook contents. We would also like to know who, if anyone, vetted these questions papers and the role of the National Academy for Primary Education in all this. 

We hope the ministry of education takes this embarrassing incident as yet another indication of the need to reform our education system—and this includes recruiting quality teachers who at least have the competence to write error-free question papers suitable for fifth graders.