where all the courses are taught in English except one Bengali Language subject at ordinary level. The General Certificate of Education system is one of the most internationally recognized qualifications, based from the United Kingdom. Students studying in the registered schools in Bangladesh following the GCE syllabus sit for these exams. Those who do not attend a school that follows the GCE syllabus may also sit for their Ordinary and Advanced Level examinations from British Council. These examinations are conducted under the supervision of British Council in Bangladesh. The GCE examination conducted by the British Council takes place twice a year. Currently there are two boards operating from Bangladesh for Ordinary and Advanced Level Examinations, which are Edexcel and University of Cambridge International Examinations.87 The Subject based based Streams Starting from the secondary level, the General and Madrassa education each follow three disciplinary streams on the basis of subject concentration: Science, Humanities and Business Studies. This course based streams were first introduced in the Pakistan Period in 1959 by breaking the traditional one stream secondary education.88 In the varoius five-year plans and other national economic policy documents developed during the Pakistan period, the need of modern science education was articulated but the impact of such policies was not felt in East Pakistan. Therefore, discarding the traditional single stream secondary education in 1959, separate streams were introduced after Class-8 namely Arts, Science and Commerce.89 Before starting the 9th grade, students have to decide which discipline they are to pursue. This is a vital choice since their avenues and options for higher studies predominantly depend on the choices they make in 9th Grade: Students from the Business and Humanities background do not qualify to pursue undergraduate studies in Science, save for a few exceptions when the students from one discipline are allowed to migrate to other streams. These three streams have common courses 90 with specific focus on some core subjects 91 that define the concentration. In order to 87 ibid M. Mustafizur Rahman (n 46) ibid, 62 According to the National Policy 2010, the common courses include Bengali, English, Bnagladesh Studies, Information Technology and General Mathematics. See, GOB (n 51) 13 88 89 90 Page | 31