The Secondary School Certificate and equivalent examinations for 2021 are going to start today, with the participation of 22,27,113 examinees across the country.

On the first day, SSC candidates will take the physics (theory) examinations from 10:00am to 11:30am and Dakhil candidates will take either Quran Majid and Tajweed or Physics from 2:00pm to 3:30pm.

The examinations of three different groups — science, commerce and humanities — will be held at different times to maintain social distancing.

The number of the examinations has been reduced to three for each of the students.

The syllabuses and the examination duration have also been reduced.

The examinations will be held for one and a half hours while guardians are discouraged to stay outside examination centres amid the ongoing Covid pandemic.

Examinees will have to enter their centres 30 minutes before the examinations  while all will have to strictly follow social distancing.

The students with special needs will be able to take assistants to the centres and get up to 20 minutes of extra time to complete the examinations.

The SSC examinations usually take place in the first week of February but this year, the examinations will be held between November 14 and November 23.

The Dakhil examinations will be concluded on November 21.

Coaching centres across the country were asked to remain closed from November 8 to November 25 to prevent question paper leak.

This year, 22,27,113 examinees, including 18,00,998 SSC, 3,01,887 Dakhil and 1,24,228 SSC vocational examinees, will sit for the examinations from 29,035 educational institutions under 3,679 centres.

The numbers of educational institutions and examination centres were 28,884 and 3,512 in 2020.

The results will be published within 30 days after the examinations.

In 2020, the SSC and equivalents examinations and the Junior School Certificate and equivalent examinations were held normally while the subject mapping method was used to publish the results of the HSC and equivalent examinations based on the results of the SSC, the JSC and equivalent examinations.

The classroom activities of educational institutions across the country remained suspended due to the Covid situation from March 18, 2020 till September 11 this year.

This year, the HSC and equivalent examinations are scheduled to start on December 2.