This year’s Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and equivalent examinations began under ten education boards across the country this morning.

The exams began at 10:00am at 3,497 centres and students will have to take seats 30 minutes prior to the tests.

This year, a total of 21,35,333 students -– 10,70,441 boys and 10,64,892 girls – from 28,682 institutions have registered for the exams.

The number of examinees rose by more than 1.03 lakh from last year.

The written tests will end on February 26, while the practical tests would be held from February 27 to March 14.

Of the examinees, 17,00,102 are sitting for the SSC exams under eight general education boards while 3,10,172 for Dakhil exams under the Madrasa Education Board, and 1,25,059 for vocational exams under the Bangladesh Technical Education Board.

A total of 434 students will take the exams from eight overseas centres as well.

At a pre-examination briefing on Thursday, Education Minister Dipu Moni insisted that there would be no incident of question paper leak during the public exams this time.

The coaching centres across the country have been asked to remain closed from January 27 till February 27 to facilitate proper holding of SSC and equivalent exams to check question leak.