C T Online Desk: The Secondary School Certificate (SSC), Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and equivalent exams for the next year will be held in a shorter syllabus, says Education Minister Dipu Moni.
Addressing a media call on Tuesday at the Secretariat, she said that the public exams for tenth-graders will be held in April while twelfth-graders will sit for the test in June.
The students who will take the SSC exams next year did not get the opportunity to attend in-person classes till March 15, said Dipu Moni.
“If schools are open till December, they will only get 162 days in class for their necessary lectures, whereas they would have gotten 316 days if the institutions were not closed,” she added.
The students could not go to in-person classes till September 12, 2021 after the pandemic unfolded in March 2020. And once again, from January 20 to February 21, educational institutions were shut down due to the rise in the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Students attended classes only two days a week until this year’s March 14, after which schools were reopened fully.
The tenth-graders also did not get the opportunity to take the Junior School Certificate (JSC) and Junior Dakhil Certificate (JDC) examinations in 2020, the minister added.
The twelfth-graders were not able to attend in-person classes for eight months. If normal class activities continue till next December, they will be able to participate in a total of only 200 days of classes.
“Considering these aspects, the Education Ministry has taken the decision to shorten the syllabus for the students,” said Dipu Moni.
The education minister also hinted at scrapping JSC, JDC and equivalent exams this year.
She said: “As this year’s SSC equivalent examination will be held in June and HSC equivalent examination in August, it will be difficult to conduct the JSC and JDC tests in November.”
However, annual examinations will be arranged in schools for the assessment for the eighth grade like any other classes, she added.
Usually, the SSC and equivalent exams are held in February and HSC in April every year before the coronavirus pandemic unfolded in Bangladesh in 2020.
