The first-ever Junior School Certificate (JSC) and Junior Dakhil Certificate (JDC) examinations of 15,05,391 class VIII students from 27,221 educational institutions across the country start today.
At the pre-examination briefing at the secretariat yesterday, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said all the necessary preparations are complete for the examinations.
From now on, there would be no class final examination for class VIII, he added.
The examinations would help reduce drop outs and bring a qualitative change in the education system, he said adding now scholarships would be given on the basis of JSC and JDC results.
“Like the SSC examinations, JSC and JDC exams will be held in uniform question paper with uniform evaluation system so that standardisation can be ensured in the quality of education,” Nahid said.
Earlier, a small percent of class VIII students used to sit for the scholarship exam. Teachers had to remain busy with them without giving attention to the other students, he explained.
“Now the new examination system gives an opportunity to all students to attain scholarships,” he said.
The number of girls’ participation is higher than boys in the first exams. A total of 7,05,272 boys and 8,00,119 girls are taking the exams at 1,804 centres across the country under eight general education boards and one madrasa education board.
Some 12,33,391 students under the eight boards and 2,72,000 students from madrasa board will do the exams, according to the official statistics.
All the subjects except Bangla second paper, English first and second papers, and mathematics of general school categories will be held in creative question methods.
There will be two sections — objective and written — in question paper of every subject and the students of both the categories will have to get 33 together from the two sections to pass the exams.
The disabled students will get 15 minutes extra time. JSC and JDC examinations will end on November 14 and November 15 respectively.
Education Secretary Dr Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury and other high officials were present in the briefing.
