Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni made the disclosure today while talking to reporters after a programme organised marking Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's 75th birthday in the capital's Agargaon.
Students will be promoted to next the class through terminal examinations, Dipu Moni said.
"The educational institutions were reopened across the country as the Covid-19 situation improved. It has also been decided to take Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) examinations during the pandemic," she added.
Dipu Moni further said all kinds of preparations were completed to begin SSC and HSC examinations from 14 November and 2 December respectively.
Besides, JSC and JDC examinations were not held last year due to the worsening Covid situation.
Background
The Junior School Certificate and Junior Dakhil Certificate were the public examinations at the end of Class 8, introduced in 2010 and sat by around 2.5 million students a year. Schools had been closed for 543 days, from March 2020 to September 2021, the longest pandemic closure in the world, and the ministry's priority when they reopened was to get the SSC and HSC batches through their delayed examinations on a shortened syllabus.
What replaced the examination
Students who would have sat JSC and JDC in 2021 were promoted to Class 9 on the basis of assignments and school assessments, the same "auto-pass" approach used for the 2020 batch. The registration fee schools had already collected for the examination was ordered refunded or adjusted against the next year's fees. Guardians' groups welcomed the decision at the time; teachers' associations were split, with many arguing that the Class 8 examination had become a source of coaching-centre pressure and guidebook sales rather than learning, which is the argument that later carried the day when the examination was abolished.
What happened next
Updated September 2026. The SSC examinations began on 14 November 2021 and the HSC on 2 December, as announced. JSC and JDC were not held in 2022 either, and the new national curriculum introduced from 2023 abolished the Class 8 public examination altogether, along with the Class 5 PEC, in favour of school-based assessment. After the change of government in August 2024 the new curriculum was withdrawn and the 2012 curriculum restored, but the Class 8 examination has not been reinstated; the last JSC was held in 2019.
