Tucked away among the green hills of Bandarban, Rowangchhari Government High School looks like an ordinary education institution from outside. With only nine teachers, only three of them regular, the school is in fact much less than an ordinary one.

But when it comes to performance in the public examinations, the only high school in Rowangchhari upazila beats the overall pass rate of the impassable hilly district of Bandarban.

Situated 158 kilometres away from the district headquarters, the school achieved a pass rate of 93.46 percent in this year's Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations in comparison to 63.39 percent of the entire district and 82.77 percent of the Chittagong Board under which it belongs.

Out of 107 students -- 57 boys and 50 girls -- who took the exam, 100 [53 boys and 47 girls] passed and three of them scored GPA 4.96. Eighty-three of the successful students were from the humanities group and 17 from the business studies group.

"There were no students from science as we do not have any science teacher for last two years," said Md Abdur Sabur, headmaster of the school that has 550 students.

Sabur said they had nine teachers -- three of them are under the government pay roll, two have been appointed by the District Council and others are part-timers.

Yet the school was quite consistent in its last year's SSC performance as well with 75 out of 85 students coming out successful.

"The District Council has also built a boys hostel two years ago where 32 residential students stay. Before the SSC exam we make it mandatory for the examinees living in remote areas to stay at the hostel," the headmaster added.

Most of the students come from indigenous communities whose villages are located in distant parts of the upazila.

"We also arrange extra-hour coaching at the school after the test exams and conduct regular parent-teacher meetings," said Sabur.

This year 93,631 examinees got GPA-5 (Grade Point Average-5) in eight education boards with a pass percentage of 86.72.

Under the eight education boards, 11,08,683 students -- 5,48,362 boys and 5,60,321 girls -- passed the SSC exams this year, while 1,47,278 students failed.