Some 29 per cent of the students of Class VIII and 26 per cent students of Class IX in both urban and rural areas of the country failed in basic learning assessment under a recent study amid huge learning losses due to the school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the results of an Education Watch study.

The Education Watch Study 2022, titled as Post Pandemic Education: Recovery and renewal of School Education, was published at a press briefing organised by Campaign for Popular Education at BICC in the capital on Saturday.

Some 85 per cent of the students of Class VIII and Class IX, in both urban and rural areas of the country, depended on private tutors or coaching centres during the pandemic.

The study also found that 78.9 per cent of the primary and 82.5 per cent of the secondary students used commercial guidebooks to prepare for their lessons and examinations.

Parents reported spending, on average, Tk 669 at the primary level and Tk 2,065 at the secondary level for buying guidebooks and notebooks in the first nine months of 2022.

The Education Watch study, titled Post-Pandemic Education: Recovery and Renewal of School Education, was carried out in 2022 with the overall objective to identify, review and analyse the effects of the Covid-induced school closure on learning outcomes and the post-pandemic recovery and renewal measures in school education.

The study also found that 100 per cent of the education officials at district and upazila levels and more than 97 per cent of the primary and secondary school teachers in the study viewed that significant learning losses occurred due to the pandemic school closures.

The overall result of a learning assessment showed that 28.9 per cent of the Class VIII students could not obtain the pass marks of 33 per cent; the Class IX figure was 26.2 per cent.

The study was conducted between October-November 2022 while the learning assessment held in October 2022.

The total study sample size was 5,692 respondents from eight districts — Dhaka, Chattogram, Jashore, Bhola, Rajshahi, Gaibandha, Netrakona and Habiganj — from eight divisions, 21 upazilas, two city corporations and 72 clusters covering urban, semi-urban and rural areas.

Earlier, according to the findings of the study Learning Loss Due to Covid-19 in Primary Education of Bangladesh conducted by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board, learning losses due to the school closures during the pandemic were evident in all grades and subjects between Class II and Class V.