The photo has been used for illustrative purposes.

Mohammed Ibrahim, Staff Reporter

The final exams for the academic year 2018-2019 are scheduled to start on Wednesday 19 June for students from grades 1 to 12 in the governmental and private schools following the Ministry’s curriculum.  The examinations will continue until June 30 for grades 11-12 of the general and advanced streams and the 9 and 10 Elite stream.

Exams for grades 9, 10 of specialised stream, 9 General stream, 6, 7, 8 General and elite streams and 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 grades will end on 26 June.

The 9th grade (general and advanced), 10th grade (advanced) exams will end on the 27th of June.

It is worth mentioning that the total number of students sitting for the 12th grade exam amounted to 29,089 students at the state level, 19,152 in government schools, 8,411 in private education, and 1,526 students in technical education.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) has set two hours for the exam duration for grades from 4 to 12, starting at 9.30 and continuing until 11.30.

The duration of the exam for students from grades 1,2 and 3 is 1,5 hours starting from 9.30 to 11.  The MoE has issued a circular banning reading questions for students or directing them to the answer in any subject. Students of 12th grade (General and advanced) streams will start exams on Wednesday 19th with the Islamic Education subject, followed by Social Studies on 20th, Mathematics on 23rd, Arabic on 24th, Physics on 25th, English on 26th, and Biology or Chemistry on 27th for 12th General stream students. The advanced stream students are going to sit for the Chemistry exam on 27th and will end exams with the Health Sciences on 30th June.

The Ministry emphasised the need to ensure students do not carry mobile devices or smartphones and any educational means related to the subjects for the exams.

The boxes of questions will be delivered to the exam classes 10 minutes earlier. A student’s apology for the exam can only be accepted if applied not more than two working days. According to the MoE, the original apology should be handed over to the Chief of the Examinations while the student should keep a copy.  The ministry also affirmed that there must not be any relatives of any kind inside the examination classes, stressing strict confidentiality with the examination documents, and not to disclose any data, statistics or results before they are officially approved.

The students’ summer holiday is scheduled to begin on July 4, while the teaching, technical and administrative staff will continue until 11th, bringing the total number of school days of the academic year 2018-2019, to 182 days.