Girls beat boys in HKCEE exams

Updated at 6.47pm: The Examination Authority announced another excellent year for HKCEE exams on Tuesday, with significant improvements in core subjects, but said that girls had widened the examination gap on their male classmates.

Over one hundred and thirty thousand students were fighting for 24,3000 Form Six places, and 40 per cent, or 50,000 candidates, met the minimum requirement (8 points) in the Hong Kong Certificate Examination, the Authority said.

Individual results will be given on Wednesday, but the Authority singled out the 23,500 who scored more than 14 points has being almost certain to get a place.

''67.9 per cent of the candidates passed all subjects and the overall pass rate rose by two per cent, as compared to last year's result,'' a spokeswoman said.

The students also performed better in the three core subjects- Chinese, English and Mathematics this year. ''The overall pass rate of the three subjects is above 60 per cent and 74 per cent for Mathematics alone,'' she said.

Nonetheless, about 7,000 students failed five subjects and scored zero points.