Students who failed to enrol in their desired courses at the Vocational Training Council (VTC) after queuing for three days this weekend have criticised the council's admissions system as unfair and confusing.
Hundreds of students had queued for three days at the council's nine campuses before admissions began at 9am yesterday for its higher diploma and diploma programmes. Around 400 people were still queuing at the Haking Wong campus in Cheung Sha Wan yesterday morning.
The council said about 3,000 graduates of its other programmes fulfilled the minimum entrance requirements for the higher diploma and diploma programmes this year, but only 2,000 places were available to them as 10,000 had been reserved for this year's Form Five graduates.
It said the course allocation system was operated on a first-come-first-served basis.
At the front of the queue at the Haking Wong campus was a Nepalese girl named Kaur Amanpreet. She was delighted that her three days of queuing bore fruit. She was admitted into her first choice of course: a hotel training programme.
'I have queued with a group of my friends since last Friday,' she said. 'I was scared that I would have to fight for the places with the Form Five graduates. So I came here four days [before the admissions started].'