Two of the four schools in mainland China, whose students can take Hong Kong’s university entrance exams as school candidates, reported that most of their pupils passed the core subjects, surpassing the citywide average.
The four schools in the Greater Bay Area are the only institutions on the mainland approved by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority to register their students as candidates for the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams. Students pursuing the curriculum elsewhere must register as private candidates.
Following the release of the DSE results on Wednesday, the two schools reported that most of their students had passed the core subjects, achieving at least Level 3 in both Chinese and English, Level 2 in mathematics, and an “attained” in citizenship and social development.
To qualify for admission to Hong Kong’s eight public universities, students must also achieve Level 3 or above in two elective subjects. However, the four mainland schools did not disclose how many students had met this threshold.
This year, the proportion of day-school candidates who met the minimum admission requirements fell slightly to 36.8 per cent, down from last year’s 38.5 per cent.
Shenzhen Hong Kong Pui Kiu College Longhua Xinyi School said that 87 per cent of its students passed all the core subjects, while the Affiliated School of JNU for Hong Kong and Macau Students (ASJNU) in Guangzhou also reported a 71 per cent pass rate.
The proportions were higher than the overall pass rate of 42.7 per cent among the more than 43,000 day-school candidates.
ASJNU’s Dongguan branch did not disclose its pass rate, stating only that all graduates had achieved scores that met the undergraduate admission requirements for universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Minxin Hong Kong School in Guangzhou, similarly, only reported that more than 90 per cent of its students had achieved results meeting university entrance requirements in general.
Most DSE subjects are graded on a seven-level scale, from Level 1 to 5**. Students who achieve Level 5 in a subject are graded as 5, 5* or 5**.
Aaron Pei Kai-chun, 18, a graduate of Shenzhen’s Pui Kiu College, achieved Level 5 in most of the six subjects he took.
Pei, who was born in Hong Kong to mainland parents living in Shenzhen, chose to attend secondary school across the border due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Studying in Hong Kong [during the pandemic] would have meant moving there, which felt too difficult for my family and me, and it was a bit hard to get used to that kind of arrangement,” he said.
He later learned that Pui Kiu College was a “well-regarded” Hong Kong school that had opened a branch on the mainland, which drew his interest.
Pei hopes to enter the “science master class” programme at the University of Hong Kong, which allows students to earn a bachelor of science and a masters of research simultaneously over a 4½ to five-year period.
Minxin School graduate Nicole Li Peizhen achieved Level 5* or higher in all seven of her subjects and has received an admission offer from University College London.
But Li said she would instead pursue medical studies in Hong Kong to build a career that balanced practice and research.
“I think Hong Kong is a very good international platform,” she said. “I can access a lot of international information here without necessarily studying abroad, and I also feel more comfortable in Hong Kong.”
Minxin School principal Halina Poon Suk-han noted that the school offered free tutoring services to help students improve their performance in their weaker subjects.
Students can also arrange after-school tutoring sessions with their teachers, she added.
