Despite global outcry over the maths exam, 31 students in Hong Kong have achieved top marks in the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme.
More than 2,600 Hong Kong students sat the IB exams, a near 20 per cent increase over the past five years, with the results released on Sunday.
The IB exams assess students’ knowledge of several core academic subjects and play a key role in their university applications.
Kristen Lo Man-yi, 17, was the only student from St Paul’s Co-Educational College to achieve a perfect score of 45 in the programme, while eight of her classmates got 44.
Kristen, who said she “didn’t expect this [result] at all”, thanked her friends and classmates for their support throughout the two-year slog.
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“I think the IB is like a marathon, and so I think a lot of work is actually continuous because we have to test two years’ worth of knowledge,” she said.
“So I think making sure that every step of the way you’re doing the right preparation, such as making notes and all that … makes the lead-up to the final stretch before exams much easier to handle.”
While Kristen did not specifically cite a subject that caused her difficulty, she said that the consensus among her peers was that the maths exam was much tougher than expected, a sentiment that aligned with other students’ experiences around the world.
“We usually prepare [for maths] through doing past papers, and the level of difficulty [in this year’s exam] was definitely significantly different,” she said.
Kristen said she believed that IB assessors had made adjustments to the grade boundary to compensate.
More than 25,000 students across the world have signed a petition to lower the grade boundaries for the maths subject on the grounds that it was too difficult.
Belinda Ng, the IB coordinator for St Paul’s Co-Educational College, agreed with Kristen that the maths grade boundaries were likely to have been “adjusted accordingly”.
“I think what the students reflected is a pretty fair assessment of how they felt, as well as how the paper matched up with their abilities,” Ng said. “Overall, I think it’s true. A lot of people across the globe did express the same concerns.”
Ng added that the maths papers could have undergone “some internal moderation”, but noted that it was always hard to predict the difficulty level for each year’s exams.
Kristen, meanwhile, is still debating whether to stay in Hong Kong to attend a local university or jet off to the United Kingdom, but she said she wanted to study medicine.
“No matter where I go, I’m definitely going to come back to Hong Kong and be a healthcare professional,” she said.
Two of the city’s top scorers came from the Canadian International School of Hong Kong. Singapore International School (Hong Kong) and Independent Schools Foundation Academy also each had one pupil achieving 45 points.
Students from institutions under the English Schools Foundation (ESF) accounted for 15 of the city’s best performers, while another three came from Diocesan Boys’ School (DBS) and five came from Victoria Shanghai Academy.
Schools affiliated with the Po Leung Kuk charity also said three of their students had achieved full marks.
Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College produced two top scorers. Another top scorer came from Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School.
One of DBS’ perfect scorers, 18-year-old Nicholas Ko Kin-fung, said he was elated to learn about his results.
“I felt very grateful for all the preparation the school gave me, and I want to thank my teachers and my classmates who gave me confidence during the exams,” he said.
Classmate and fellow top scorer Eric Tsang Cheuk-kin, 18, said: “I think the score is a reward for my years of hard work. I want to thank myself and the organisation.”
Both Tsang and the school’s third top student, Jeffrey Chiang Shing-hun, also 18, said they planned to study medicine in Hong Kong and hoped to contribute to the city.
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Ko said he would study maths and computer science at the University of Oxford, as he believed that universities in the UK were more intensive than those in Hong Kong, allowing him to focus more deeply on his chosen field.
“Of course, studying abroad doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll stay overseas. I’m also considering returning to work in Hong Kong after graduation,” he said.
Chun Ip-wang, 17, and Carlyn Ho Jai-lin, 18, were two of the five students from Victoria Shanghai Academy to receive full marks.
Upon receiving the call from his school with the results, Ip-wang said he was “very emotional” and “speechless”.
“It was very rewarding, because I had spent so much time studying for the exams, and during study break, I worked really hard across all six subjects,” he said.
Ip-wang said he had secured an offer from the University of Hong Kong to study a double degree programme that awarded a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Research.
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As for Ho, she felt “surprised but also really happy” upon receiving her scores and knowing that all of her hard work had paid off.
Ho said she planned to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she would study molecular, cell and developmental biology for a pre-medicine track.
She added that she hoped to go to medical school in the United States or Canada and become a doctor.
Isaac Wan Hong-long, 18, one of the top scorers at Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College, said he planned to study computer science at the University of Toronto and work in the field of artificial intelligence.
He added that he found the maths paper to be hard this year, as the questions required students to think a little more outside the box.
“After doing almost 10 to 15 years’ worth of maths past papers, I would say this year’s exam was actually a bit harder, but still quite on a par with the IB level,” he said.
