Nazrul Islam said that earlier only 10 per cent students of class V in every school across the country were able to take the exam, but now the government has increased this figure to 20 per cent.
Students will be tested on Bengali, English, Mathematics and Science on a 100-point scale with 25 marks for each subject. The exam will be of two hours.
Previously, fifth grade students were able to take an exam at the end of grade 5 to secure a scholarship for their secondary education.
But the introduction of the Primary Education Certificate Examination in 2009 put an end to the separate scholarship examination. The students later got government stipend based on their performance in PEC exam.
However, the PEC exam has not been conducted for the last two years due to the coronavirus pandemic. Later, the government announced that the exam would be scrapped as a new syllabus was about to come.