Placements in 2000 may hit HKCEE results
Elite schools may not score as highly in this year's Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination results - to be released tomorrow - due to a change in the way secondary school places were allocated in 2000, educators said yesterday.
Form Five students who sat the exams this year were the first group sitting the HKCEE to be streamed into three ability bands rather than five, a move introduced by the government and intended to increase student diversity within schools.
Principals warned that some elite schools may have had trouble adapting their teaching methods to a broader range of abilities.
Anissa Chan Wong Lai-kuen, principal of St Paul's Co-Educational College in Mid-Levels, said it was difficult to predict what effect the change would have, but 'logically', it was likely to cause a dip in the top schools' results.
Schools that took in exclusively band one students could in the past be certain their pupils were in the top 20 per cent, Ms Chan said, but they would now be from the top third.
But she said the difference would not be so noticeable at schools that sourced most of their intake from linked or feeder primary schools - such as St Paul's.
William Yip Kam-yuen, chairman of the Aided Secondary Schools Heads' Council, said: 'The diversity has definitely increased within schools, and it has decreased the diversity between schools.
'With the switch from five bands to three bands, some higher-performing schools will find it more difficult to teach. But we will have to wait for the full results to be released before we can comment more precisely.'
Chan Wai-kai, chairman of the Direct Subsidy Scheme Schools Council, said the increase in their number and popularity could have an effect on performance in traditional elite schools as they were attracting many students from the top two bands.
But he added that he doubted there would be a major upset in the outcome of this year's exams.
