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The last batch of Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination(A-levels) candidates will have their results unveiled on Tuesday marking the discontinuance of the 34-year-old university entry exam.
The last A-levels is exclusively for private candidates only. Upon its completion Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education exam (DSE) in 2014 will take over as the major channel of undergraduate admission.
This is the new arrangement under Hong Kong's education reform. Before the reform, students had to first go through Hong Kong Certificate for Education Examination (HKCEE) to enter matriculation classes, and then pass A-levels to enter universities.
Those who got full marks in HKCEE could be directly admitted to universities without taking A-levels.
The exam this year is exclusively for private candidates, i.e non school students, therefore only 4541 people sat for the exam, compared to more than 50,000 last year. The oldest candidate was 64 years old, while the youngest being 14.
"Although this is going to be the last, and the smallest-scale A-levels this year, we are still taking it seriously," said Tong Chong-Sze, Secretary General of the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA), administrator of the city's public exams under the Hong Kong government's Education Bureau.
"About 1000 personnel and 42 schools involved took part in the operation of the exam," Tong said.
The A-levels kicked off in 1980, administered by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA). Over the past 34 years more than 922,400 candidates had taken the exam, and around 17370,300 scripts were marked.
Thomas Cheung, director of the Development and Educational Assessment of the HKEAA, was one of the examiners of the A-levels.
Recalling one of the most unforgettable matters of the years of handling A-levels exams, he said back in 1996, the HKEAA identified a group of students who put down sample essays in the Chinese Language and Culture writing exam. Most of those students failed that key subject.
"This incident aroused controversy in the society, but we still insist, because we firmly believe that students should write an essay with their own words and ideas, but not with readily available materials," Cheung said.
Wan Tak-wing, general manager of assessment and development of the HKEAA, was one of the A-levels candidates in 1980.
As one of the "pioneers" of the exam, he said he was happy to see the changes of the exam questions and syllabus, which follows closely to the environment.
"For example, Chinese was not a compulsory subject until 1994," Wan said. He also witness the massive expansion of the first degree places, from 2 percent in the 1980's to about 24 percent in 2012.
The officials of the Education Bureau unanimously acclaimed the contribution of the A-levels in helping students to pave their ways to their future, be it in the academic fields or not. They said the newly started DSE will continue, if not better serve the students in the education front.
