Five days ago, students broke down the front door of the Chattogram Board of Education and threw it into a canal, demanding the suspension of the baccalaureate exams. On Sunday, July 19, some of the same students broke into the board’s headquarters again, this time demanding the exact opposite: the resumption of the exams they had fought so hard to have suspended.
Around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, a group of baccalaureate students presented a memorandum to the president of the Chattogram Board of Education, requesting that the suspended exams be resumed as soon as possible. The students came from four institutions: Chattogram College, Government Haji Muhammad Mohsin College, Government City College, and Cantonment Public College.
Not Just “Resume” — Resume With Breathing Room
The demand comes with an important condition, and it is precisely this detail that makes this memorandum more than just a simple correction. The students not only asked for the exams to resume quickly, but also requested that the new schedule include a reasonable interval between exams for each subject.
Their reasoning, as set out in the memorandum, is that adequate spacing between tests would give test-takers a real opportunity to prepare properly for each subject, rather than facing consecutive exams on a rushed make-up schedule. Having already lost preparation time due to the floods and the suspension itself, the students are asking the examination board not to compound that loss with a schedule so tight that it becomes an additional hardship.
Who Made the Demand
The memorandum was submitted by named student representatives from each institution:
- Chattogram College: S M Nazif Noor, Mohammad Zaidul Kabir, Maruf Hossain Tasin, Md. Mahtabur Rahman, Shadman Karim, and Md. Hasibul Mojit Ayon
- Government City College: Md. Zayed Chowdhury, Md. Rais Jamal Wafi, and Tausif Mahmud
- Cantonment Public College: Shahriar Hashim and other examinees
The Chattogram Board Chair personally received the memorandum and assured students that he would raise the matter with higher authorities on Monday. The Board’s Examinations Controller, Professor Parvez Sajjad Chowdhury, confirmed that student representatives from Chattogram College, Mohsin College, and Government City College had submitted several demands, that the Chair had received their memorandum, and that a decision would be made following discussions with senior officials.
The Full Arc of a Five-Day Reversal
To understand the significance of this moment, it is helpful to examine how we got here. On Tuesday, July 14, students taking the exams began a protest outside the main gate of the Chattogram Examination Board with three demands: the suspension of all ongoing exams nationwide, punishment for those responsible for errors in the exams, and a solution to the chaos caused by flooding at the exam centers. During the protest, the board’s main gate was torn off its hinges and thrown into a canal, and traffic on one side of CDA Avenue was blocked for hours. The students stated that they were forced to take to the streets after their previous requests for a date change were ignored, and they warned that continued inaction would trigger a movement demanding the resignation of the Minister of Education—which, in the following days, exactly happened across the country.
By Thursday, July 16, the board had gone beyond a temporary postponement, indefinitely suspending all remaining HSC and equivalent exams at the Chattogram Board. The students had achieved their main demand. But an indefinite suspension creates uncertainty: the lack of an exam date means the absence of a clear goal, the impossibility of planning their studies, and, reportedly, great difficulty maintaining concentration during an endless wait.
That uncertainty seems to be precisely what led the students to the doors of the examination board on Sunday, not to protest, but to ask, in essence: now that time has stopped, please resume it soon and do so fairly.
What Happens Next
The president’s commitment to raise the issue with higher authorities on Monday means there could be an answer within days. Since the government’s five-pronged package already promised that flood-affected students nationwide would have their make-up exams alongside Chattogram’s rescheduled exams, any routine the board ultimately announces will affect far more than just these five districts.
We will be closely following Monday’s discussions and will publish the revised routine—and whether it includes the social distancing requested by students—as soon as it is announced. To the Chattogram students caught between the flooding, the suspension, and now the wait for a fair restart: your patience throughout this ordeal has not gone unnoticed. Stay tuned.