Young Teenage Suicides in Bangladesh—Are Mandatory Junior School Certificate Exams to Blame?

In Bangladesh, secondary level education consists of seven years of formal schooling. The first 3 years are referred to as junior secondary (grades VI-VIII), the next 2 years are secondary (grades IX-X), while the final 2 years are higher secondary (grades XI-XII) (Hossain 2016). At the end of elementary education (at grade V), there is a public examination called the Primary School Certificate (PSC), followed by the Junior School Certificate (JSC) at grade VIII, the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) at Grade X, and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) before entering university at grade XII. Before the PSC and JSC exams were introduced, there was no mandatory examination before SSC in Bangladesh, although a few students took the Junior Scholarship (at grade VIII) in an attempt to getting scholarship funding from the government (Hossain 2016; Daily Star 2010). The JSC was introduced in 2010 with 1.5 million examinees. This comprises a common question paper for students of all eight educational boards in the country and another separate paper for the Madrasa board (Daily Star 2010). The final JSC exam is held at the end of year, but three termly exams and a model test (and additional weekly and monthly tests in some schools) are taken in preparation for this exam for the students (Hossain 2016).