The Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE, 香港中學會考, Hong Kong School Certificate Examination, HKSCE) was a standardised examination between 1974 and 2011 after most local students' five-year secondary education, conducted by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA), awarding the Hong Kong Certificate of Education secondary school leaving qualification. The examination has been discontinued in 2012 and its roles are now replaced by the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education as part of educational reforms in Hong Kong. It was considered equivalent to the United Kingdom's GCSE.
Overview Students usually took the HKCEE at the end of their five-year period of secondary school in Hong Kong; it was compulsory for students who wanted to pursue further education, but some students took individual examinations to increase their chance of continuing their study or to fulfil certain requirements in tertiary education programs. The final year in which school candidates were accepted was 2010. There were 127,162 candidates entered for the examination, 90,063 of them school candidates and 37,099 private candidates.
The HKCEE was conducted from late February to June, but major subjects were taken between mid-April and May, after the major subjects examination in the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination were completed, by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA). Oral examinations were conducted in late May to early July.
Examination results were released in early August, traditionally on the Wednesday after the first-round admission of the Joint University Programmes Admissions System had been released. There were 39 subjects available in the HKCEE. Most day-school candidates took 6 to 8 subjects in the HKCEE, with 10 being the upper limit. Apart from Chinese and English, which were taken by almost every school candidate, and language-specific subjects (French, Chinese History (Chinese only), Buddhist Studies (Chinese only), Literature in English (English only), Putonghua (Chinese only) and Word Processing and Business Communication (English only), all subjects could be taken in either Chinese or English. The same standards were applied in marking and grading regardless of the choice of language, and the language medium was not recorded on the results notices or certificates. It was, however, recorded on admission forms.
Purpose After sitting the HKCEE and having their examination results announced, candidates could apply for a place in sixth form in local schools in Hong Kong. Moreover, to qualify for the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE), students had to pass certain requirements of HKCEE as a prerequisite. The Joint University Programmes Admissions System (JUPAS), including the EAS system under JUPAS, also considered students' HKCEE results as a requirement and as a decisive factor of admission in the admission processes. Thus, students' results in HKCEE affected their application to sixth form but also directly affected the chance of entering the universities after seventh form, which was commonly ignored by students until they entered sixth form. In JUPAS, most admissions programs gave HKCEE results about a 10–30% weight, and some as much as 50%; the HKALE results provided the other 50%.JUPAS Walkthrough 2008, Mingpao Education Net, 2007 Thus, HKCEE was the initial stage of University Entrance Examination.
The HKCEE was fully recognised by other countries including New Zealand, Australia, the UK, the US and many other major countries. It was equivalent to Year 11 in Australia and in the UK.
For comparison, the Mathematics syllabus of HKCEE was equivalent to New Zealand's National Certificate of Educational Achievement Level 2 Mathematics at Form 6 (Year 12) level (excluding Calculus) rather than NCEA Level 1 or its predecessor the School Certificate examination, sat by the country's Form 5 (Year 11) students.
Additional Mathematics in the HKCEE was more advanced than NCEA Level 3 Mathematics with Calculus, sat by Form 7 (Year 13) students in New Zealand to gain university entrance in science and engineering. HKCEE's Additional Mathematics was also recognised by most of the programs in Hong Kong's universities as equivalent to HKALE Pure Mathematics.
For the examination questions on the same topics, those in HKCEE tended to be loaded with unclear wordings and difficult manipulations, compared with their NCEA counterparts.
In other subjects, such as the sciences like Chemistry and Physics, the syllabus covered in HKCEE was similar to that of the SAT Subject Tests sat in Grade 12, but it was arguably easier to obtain a score of 760 on the SAT Subject Tests than to obtain a grade of A in the HKCEE examination although Grade 12 was theoretically equivalent to Form 6 under the Hong Kong school system.
Grading and UK equivalence The results of the HKCEE are expressed in terms of seven grades A – U (or 5*-1 and U for Chinese and English) other than French.
Grade Point (s) Recognition Nickname A (5*) 5 Distinction or IGCSE A* Rocket (Shape), Distinction, Tincted (from Dis'tinct'ion) B (5) 4 Credit or IGCSE A* (A for Chinese and English) Big Cred (previously Certificate's B, C was counted as 'Credit') C (4) 3 Credit or IGCSE A (B for Chinese and English) Small Cred (at the same as B), Helmet (Shape) D (3) 2 Pass or IGCSE B (C for Chinese and English) Big belly, Bald (for the shape), Dog (Alphabet D) E (2) 1 Minimum requirement for employment purposes, a pass in HKCEE or IGCSE C/D (D for Chinese and English) Comb, fork (The shape), pass (The minimum pass result) F (1) 0 IGCSE D,E,F,G Machine gun (shape), Fat (Chinese idiom meaning "failed"), fail U (UNCL) 0 Unclassified, a grade lower than G UNCLE (the short form), holding a bowl (Shape and holding a bowl is beggar's mark. It means they will have no future and must be beggars.) In the past, there were two other grades below UNCL: G and H. They were called "Grenade" and "Ladder".
Results below grade 'F' are designated as unclassified ("UNCL"), assigned either when candidates hand in unanswered or unintelligible paper (s), or when candidates are assumed to have cheated. Candidates not taking the exam are designated as Absent ('ABS') for that subject.
Before 2002 grades A – F were each divided into two "fine grades", making the original number of grades available twelve, from A (01) to F (12). The fine grades in both HKCEE and HKALE were lifted in 2002, as they were accused of being discriminatory to students.
Most of the results are graded "on the curve" but at the same time a cutoff score for each grade is also used. Obtaining an A is very difficult, especially for languages in the past system, where only about 1.5–3% of students received A's. On average, only the top 3–4% in each subject can get an A. The cutoff scores vary greatly from subject to subject and from year to year. To give a clearer picture, for Chinese, A-grades are sometimes given for candidates having scored 70 or above, while for Mathematics, an A invariably translates to a score in excess of 90. The cutoff scores are not released by the HKEAA publicly; the information is only available to teachers.
New grading system
Since 2007, as a stepping-stone towards the grading system HKDSE that will be introduced in 2010, a new grading system was introduced to the exams in the subjects of Chinese and English. Under the new system There are seven grades: five numerical grades from 1–5, where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest, and two other grades, "5*" and "UNCL", for students with particularly outstanding and poor performance respectively. The traditional "on-the-curve" system was not used other than to distinguish between the 5*'s and the 5's.
The point system was in chaos in its first year of implementation since level 2, which is the passing line in HKEAA, counts as two points in some schools and the HKEAA, but counts as one point in EMB and most schools. This counting process not only confused Form 5 students, but also some Form 6 students who repeated the exam to obtain better Language results for JUPAS admissions. The problems with the points system caused changes in the method for calculating points in HKEAA in the following years.
Since the two syllabi in English were merged into one along with the new system, some schools were worried that the level of English is insufficient for the HKALE as they expect HKEAA will decrease the difficulty to allow students who previously studied in Syllabus A (mainly from some non-EMI schools) to pass more easily. This resulted in some schools rejecting students who had a level 2 in English.
The system will be fully utilised in all major subjects in the HKDSE.
Further studies Students' results in HKCEE and their conduct (behavior at school which is usually shown in the school's internal report) at school are the main admission factors in Secondary 6, which is the main stream for university admission. In EMB's official admission processes, students with 4 passed subjects, or 3 passes with 5 marks (both excluding language subjects) is the minimum requirement. Students with 14 marks above, including passes in English and one other Language subject have an advantage as they can be admitted from the first stage of Form 6 admissions. Students scoring 30 marks (the maximum) with L4/C in two designated language subjects (one of which must be English) in their first attempt will be permitted to apply to the Direct Entry for the 3 major Universities in Hong Kong (see below).
Requirements of sitting in HKALE are independent from Form 6 admissions since they are managed by separate organisations. A student who passes all the minimum requirements for sitting in HKALE also meets all the requirements for applying for Form 6, but not vice versa. Schools may admit a student who failed in language subjects, providing that the school would bear the risk that he/she may not pass again in the following year, not allowing them to sit for the HKALE.
For admissions to the four-year Higher Diploma programs in HKIVE and degrees in The University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Science and Technology, the best 7 subjects, instead of 6, are counted. In other cases, the best 5 or 6 subjects are counted. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in addition, did not accept "combined certificates" (results obtained in more than two examinations) and must be fulfilled in a single attempt (usually the first one).
International recognition HKEAA has been working closely with international agencies, overseas universities and colleges to promote recognition of HKEAA examinations. Standards of performance in the HKCEE and HKALE have for many years been benchmarked against standards in comparable subjects at British GCE O-Level and A/AS-Level. In the case of performance in the English Language, studies have been conducted to link standards of performance in HKCEE English Language (Syllabus B) and HKALE Use of English to standards in IELTS and TOEFL.
Starting in 2007, HKCEE standards-referenced reporting was adopted in Chinese language and English language subjects. The results in the two subjects have also been benchmarked against International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) results.
The Hong Kong Diploma for Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE) was conducted for the first time in 2012. To secure appropriate recognition of HKDSE qualifications, the HKEAA had held discussions with international agencies including University of Cambridge International Examinations (CIE), National Academic Recognition Information Centre (NARIC), Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) in the UK and the Australian Education International (AEI) in Australia to conduct benchmarking and comparability research on HKDSE.