Are too many students getting GPA 5?

Grade inflation refers to the practice of grading students at a level undeserving of their performance in the exams. Although not precisely comparable to price inflation, academic grade inflation has become a concern in recent years with an overwhelming number of students achieving the highest grades in public examinations in Bangladesh. 

This is particularly problematic given how it may lead to students overestimating their capabilities and becoming complacent. 

That is not to say that grade inflation is exclusive to Bangladesh. The first case of grade inflation dates back to 1960 in the United States during the initial phases of the Vietnam War. 

It is a particularly interesting case study. The US government needed to send more American troops into the East-Asian communist stronghold, although not many Americans were interested in laying down their lives in vain. So, the American government introduced a rather draconian rule requiring male students with a GPA below 3 out of 4 to be conscripted. 

Teachers - now under the pressure of students and their parents - began giving out higher grades so that the students could avoid being conscripted. And so began the journey of grade inflation as a political tool.

A 2016 survey in the United States found that high school students had an average GPA of 3.27 out of 4.0 scale in 1998, which rose to 3.38 in 2016. However, over the same period, the average SAT score fell from 1026 to 1002. This contradictory trend pointed towards a tendency among institutions to inflate grades for various reasons including increased funding from the government. 

Our South Asian counterpart, India, appears to have similar problems. India has several education boards at the central and provincial levels. One particular case might interest the readers.

In 2010, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) introduced a new grading system for class X in 2010. Under this new system, 2.3 percent of about 1.6 million students got the highest grade A1, which rose to 9.84 percent in 2020.    

Bangladesh, on the other hand, introduced the grading system at the secondary level in Bangladesh in 2001. About 0.6 million students participated in SSC or equivalent examinations that year, and 35.22 percent passed, of which only 76 students got the top grade A+. Approximately 2.2 million students sat for this exam in 2021. Among those 163,340 students bagged GPA-5, or 8.9 percent were top graders among the students who have passed.   

At the HSC level, the GPA system was introduced in 2003. Students who passed the SSC examination in 2001 participated in the HSC examination of 2003, and only 20 students got GPA-5. 

GPA 5 at SSC and HSC level.

Fast forward to 2022, 1,89,179 students received GPA-5, although 1,05,594 of them received the highest grade when they sat down for their SSC exams. The following chart shows the comparative number of GPA-5 in SSC in a year and HSC in the next two years. It shows a relatively inconsistent pattern of GPA-5 achievers. 

That is not to say that the higher number of GPA-5 is entirely attributable to grade inflation. Definitely, with mass campaigns for education, subsidies for female education and the development of education infrastructure has contributed to an increased literacy rate and increased enrollment rates in Bangladeshi schools. These factors may also have led to an increasing number of students passing and getting GPA-5.

However, no standardised test has been introduced in developing countries like ours to cross-check the quality of academic results as some other countries do. For example, there are SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) for students in the United States or GAOKAO (National College Entrance Exam) in China. 

Neither do we have such a system nor is there a database to measure the return on education for these students cross-tabulated by their passing year and grades. But it is intuitive to assume students overestimating their abilities and developing a false sense of competence is never the most ideal way forward.

There are systemic issues with the grading system which inherently lead to inflated grades. For instance, in Bangladesh, one only needs to score above 80 to receive the highest grade, while the threshold is much higher in other countries. 

For instance, the standard grading in China and the United States has some five grades in the secondary level examinations. To be an A grader in a subject, one must score 90 to 100 percent. India and Indonesia have nine grades at the secondary level, and to get the highest grade, one has to achieve 90 to 100 percent. Some countries, including Israel and Jordan, require 95-100 percent marks to have the highest grade. 

In the current context, along with all the efforts to foster qualitative change in education, the range for the top grade should be changed to 90-100 percent marks from 80-100 percent. Furthermore, passing students can be divided into different distribution formats. 

For example, if a country has an eight-letter grading system, one-eighth of the passed students will remain in each grade in a particular subject. In this case, the competition for students to run for specific marks can be minimised as well. 

Md Rashedur Rahman Sardar is a PhD candidate, Department of Economics at Bryan School of Business and Economics at The University of North Carolina.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.