The Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) and equivalent examinations have begun today under 11 education boards across the country.

Around 14 lakh examinees sat for the exams at 9,183 institutions and 2,621 centres following the health guidelines.

Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni has visited the center of Government Shaheed Suhrawardy College at this morning.

Due to the pandemic, this year’s HSC tests are being held on group-wise elective subjects with shortened syllabuses.

This means there are no tests on compulsory subjects such as Bangla and English as the examinees will sit for tests on six subjects. The assessment on compulsory subjects will be based on the previous public examinations.

Each test duration will be one and a half hours. The exam has begiun with Physics (Paper 1) examination today while the examination will end on December 30 with Social Science (Paper 2) and Social Work (Paper 2) tests in the morning and Sports (Paper 2) in the afternoon.

The government had to defer this year’s HSC and equivalent examinations due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Otherwise, HSC and its equivalent exams are usually held in April.