Guardians collect admission forms for their children at government schools. The photo was taken on Monday from Government Muslim High School in the port city.Photo: STAR

Suman, who has just completed his final examinations of class five one and a half weeks ago, is not so lucky to spend some free times like previous years as he is to sit for admission test to get admitted to a government high school.
Since Suman's present school is a non-government one and competition in getting admission to secondary level is much competitive for lack of enough quality and government high schools in Chittagong. His parents are forcing him to study more only to ensure their son's admission in a quality school sure.
Like them, hundreds of parents and guardians as well as the students are gripped by anxiety with admission process started in all the primary and secondary level schools here ahead of new academic year.
The crisis is acute at the secondary level since there are only nine government schools here to enrol only 3600 students a year.
Distribution of admission forms at these government high schools started from December 7 and will continue until December 20 while the last date for submitting the forms is December 22.
Two separate admission schedules have already been declared for the nine government high schools dividing the schools into two groups.
A student would be able to take part in the admission test in two schools under different groups since the tests would be held on different days, they said.
Group-A comprises four schools including Chittagong Collegiate School, Dr Khastagir Government Girls High School, Nasirabad Government Girls High School and Chittagong Government (Boys) High School.
Tests for admission to class V and class VI will be held on December 24 and December 29 respectively while for class VII, class VIII and class IX will be held on December 27.
Five other schools Government Muslim High School, Nasirabad Govt Boys High School, Bakalia Govt Laboratory Boys High School, Hazi Md Mohsin Govt High School and Chittagong Government City Girls High School are in the Group-B.
Tests for admission to class VI and class V will be held on December 24 and December 27 respectively while for class VII, VIII and IX will be held on December 29.
There was no rush for collecting forms at different schools on the first day (Monday) of distributing forms as the admission forms are available in the website this year. Many guardians were found collecting copies of previous years' question papers.
Due to seat crisis many guardians are sending their children to coaching centres running under the teachers of different government schools, spending huge money with a view to getting some benefit in admission tests.
Nasima Begum, a guardian who has sent her son to a teacher of Collegiate School to do coaching for class VI admission test, hoped that her son would at least get some idea of the test from such coaching.
Refuting the allegation of helping the students in getting admission, Collegiate School headmaster Aziz Uddin said, “More than 2,000 students are doing coaching for admission to class V and class VI under the guidance of some of our teachers but, in fact, we can enrol only 340 students in these two classes.”
“What will be the fate of others?” he posed a question, saying that guardians themselves should take care of their children at home.
The district administration last year took some initiatives to prepare question papers for admission and publish results to avert irregularities in the admission tests.
The school authorities are yet to receive any instruction this year about the preparation of the question papers.
Additional Deputy Commissioner (Education and Development) Md Kamrul Amin said they are going to take proper initiatives to make the admission tests transparent.