Alim, Fazil and Kamil examinations under the Madrasa Education Board and business administration examinations under the Technical Education Board also begin at the same time.

A total of 497,911 candidates under all the nine boards will appear for the examinations this year.

422,474 candidates will appear in the HSC examinations under the seven general education boards, while 27,385 candidates will appear in the business administration examinations, and 48,052 will appear in the Madrassa Education Board examinations.

The total number of candidates under the Dhaka board this year is 133,690, of which 32,744 are from the science group, 56,347 from the humanities group, and 44,599 from the commerce group.

The total number of HSC candidates under the Rajshahi board is 105,740; 34,630 under the Comilla board; 70,066 candidates under the Jessore board; 33,174 candidates under the Chittagong board; 27,766 under the Barisal board; and 17,405 under the Sylhet board.

The total number of examination centres is 991, of which 261 centres including five in Doha, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, Riyadh and Tripoli fall under the Dhaka board.

This year the total number of candidates has decreased by 72,000 while the number of centres has increased by 22 compared to those of the previous year.

The reason there are fewer candidates this year is that cheating has been significantly checked on the one hand, and on the other, principals have been instructed not to allow any student unqualified in the test exams for the final exams, said Chairman of the Dhaka Board Prof Shaheda Obaed.

"This will keep the rate of failure low," she said.