The government has taken stern measures and is also keeping an eye on private coaching centres and Bangladesh Government (BG) Press to prevent leak of question papers of the upcoming Junior School Certificate (JSC) examinations, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said yesterday.
“Question papers could be leaked from the BG Press but with the help of law enforcement agencies, we have stepped up vigilance there,” he told a news conference at the Education Ministry’s auditorium.
Nahid said a monitoring system had been developed to keep an eye on those involved in preparing and distributing question papers in different education boards and also at the BG Press.
“The government has a plan to involve mobile courts for awarding question leak offenders quick punishment,” he said.
This year, a total of 2,325,933 students will take the JSC and its equivalent JDC (Junior Dakhil Certificate) exams at 2,627 centres across the country. Of them, 1,967,444 will appear for the JSC tests and 358,488 for the JDC tests.
Around 585 students will take the tests at eight overseas centres.
The number of candidates has risen by 235,241 than the previous year and the number of exam centres has also increased by 102.
Female examinees this year outnumber male candidates by 160,000.
The education minister said people have the wrong idea that the JSC and JDC tests are public examinations. “These are national-level examinations, not public exams. These help students grow their confidence to appear for public exams like secondary and higher secondary certificate tests.”
He said the government could scrap the JSC tests any time when needed. “These tests will be automatically discontinued when primary schools will teach pupils up to the eighth grade.”
Nahid admitted that the government’s strategies to stop question leaks had not been entirely successful. “But nowadays, it it really difficult to leak question papers.”
Over the last few years, some of the public examinations and admission tests have been marred by question leak allegations. Many question papers appeared on the social media. The latest question leak allegation has been raised against the medical admission test.
Nahid said coaching centres have he tendency to leak question papers. “Besides, they also spread question leak rumors. They suggest questions to students before exams and if students encounter some of those questions in the exam hall, the rumor gains grounds.”
The minister said suggesting questions to candidates prior to exams is illegal and the government is trying to stop this widespread practice.