International exam no obstacle for local student with a perfect score

It was a sleepless night for dozens of final-year students at King George V School in Kowloon when results of the school's first-ever International Baccalaureate Diploma exams were released early yesterday.

Vincent Cheung Ka-ming, 7, of Lei Yue Mun, was so nervous when the results went online at 4am that he got his parents to log on for him and read out his score - 45, the highest possible result.

'I was really feeling apprehensive,' he said. 'But they were totally over the top. They were ecstatic and were hugging me. I didn't believe them. I would have been happy if I had got a 40.'

Vincent, who has won a scholarship to study mathematics at Warwick University in Britain, was one of three students from the school who got outstanding results. Shivina Harjani, 18, and Gary Yan Jia-rui, 17, both of Kowloon Tong, each scored 44.

All final-year secondary students across the English Schools Foundation sat the exams this summer after the foundation switched over from A-levels two years ago.

The switch, which was pioneered by Sha Tin College in 2005, triggered concern among some parents about the heavier workload and the high grades required by British universities for the diploma exams compared with A-levels.