Junior School Certificate (JSC) and Junior Dakhil Certificate (JDC) examinations began across the country on Wednesday.
About 2.4 million students started, over half of whom are girls, started sitting for the exams at 10 in the morning.
Students from 28,628 educational institutions are appearing at the exams at 2,834 centres, according to a UNB report.
A total of 2,090,277 students -- 971,336 males and 1,118,941 females - are sitting for JSC exams and 378,543 -- 173,442 boys and 205,101 girls -- JDC exams, making it 2,468,820 in total.
Some 96,212 irregular students are taking part in JSC exams, 14,367 in the JDC exams while the number of special students in JSC is 87,697 and in JDC it is 11,770.
In addition, a total of 959 students are sitting for JSC and JDC exams in nine overseas centres.
The examinations will end on November 18.
A total of 56,045 examinees have increased in the JSC and JDC exams this year compared to 2412,775 examinees of the previous year.