The changes will be brought to the teaching method, curricula, question patterns and teachers' performance monitoring in the wake of growing concern over nosedive of the standards.

A Tk 490 crore project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is on to introduce school-based merit judgement system, he told The Daily Star.

In 100 marks, public examinations will be held for 70 and schools will give the remaining 30 marks in grading students, he said.

"For this, we need to train teachers so that they can judge students properly," he added.

There will be a check and balance to judge real merits, he said. Students will have to get similar marks in public examination as they secured in school grading, Milon said.

The system is aimed at erasing the apprehension that teachers can give higher marks to their own students out of bias.

"I am hopeful that it will reduce the tendency of cheating in public examinations," said the state minister, who has been carrying out an anti-copying drive since taking office.

He admitted that the standard of education was on the wane due to the absence of a proper guidance.

"We will gradually shift to multiple choice and objective questions from the subjective approach now in use," he said, adding a lot of research and practice was needed to put the system in place.

There will be also be changes in the examination paper evaluation system.

He underscored the need for upgrading the curricula to suit the present day needs.

The ministry is considering introducing semester system to evaluate students' performance not annually, but throughout the year, he added.

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a civil society think tank, in a recent remark said the circus that went in the name of public examinations made Bangladesh look silly to the world.

The infiltration of the worst forms of self-seeking and corrupt politics into education is the main cause of failure to stop the rot in the education system, it said.

Earlier, Education Minister Dr Osman Farruk said the percentage of pass in the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations were lower because of strict measures taken to check cheating.

More than 60 per cent students failed in this year's SSC examinations.