Website to cut stress of HKCEE scramble
A youth club has teamed with a mobile-phone company to help students who will be scrambling to find a school place after the HKCEE results are released next Wednesday.
'The fight for study places will be very intense,' Lit Ho-cheung, director of the Hok Yau Club's student guidance centre, said. 'There are not enough pathways for further studies this year [given the rise in exam candidate numbers].' The club specialises in career counselling.
This year a record-high 127,000 Form Five students took the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. Those with good enough marks will advance to Form Six, but those who fall below their school's standard must join the scramble to find places elsewhere.
These include Form Six in a school with a lower requirement for advancement or a place in the second year under the new senior secondary curriculum. Other options are vocational schools or sub-degree courses at college.
To help students as they race around the city to secure a place - they must apply in person - the club has teamed up with Nokia, the mobile-phone company, to provide instant updates of places in Form Six and Year Two of the new senior secondary curriculum.
The available places will appear on the Hok Yau Club's website, and Nokia is providing an application that will format the data for mobile-phone callers and make it immediately accessible.
Lit is advising students to come up with several plans well before Wednesday. 'Students should evaluate the score they will get, based on their past performance at schools. In case they do not secure a Form Six place, they should have several options in mind, such as enrolling in a programme offered by the Vocational Training Council or switching to the second year of the senior academic curriculum.'
Most of the 453 secondary schools will reserve places for their own students who fail to attain enough points to progress to Form Six and want to switch to the second year of the senior secondary curriculum.
The Education Bureau said 15,810 places will be set aside by various schools for students making that switch.
Until now, the pupils who failed to gain a Form Six place - an average of 10,000 per year - had the option of repeating Form Five, but that has been phased out under the new curriculum.
