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Agatha Ngai

A recent poll on the issues that students were most concerned about involved 10 news events. In the coming two weeks, we are going to look back on them. We can gain much insight from what people have said and done.

Exam papers get an 'F'

(SCMP,  May 24, 2001)

Patrick Poon and Cynthia Wan

Elaine Poon has been angry and upset since discovering the Examinations Authority made a mistake in the Advanced Level, or A-level, Examination in pure mathematics - a mistake she says could keep her from securing a university place in the autumn.

In one calculus question, (6 - x) was typed as (x - 6), making the problem impossible to solve. Elaine, who declines to give her full Chinese name for fear of being identified by exam officials, says this flawed question forced her to waste time during the April 20 (2001) exam and may have caused her to fail.

'I am confident I would have passed if the question had been properly presented,' the 20-year-old says.

'After taking the exam and learning about the error on television, I was so upset that I collapsed and could not concentrate on studying for the physics exam two days later.'

Faced with a dilemma, the Examinations Authority considered whether to throw out the entire pool of A-level pure maths results and require the 9,200 candidates who took the exam to take another one, or retain the results but allow candidates to volunteer for a second exam, or simply to adjust their scores for the flawed exam. In the end, officials opted for this last path, adjusting scores on the portion of the exam - Paper 2, Section B - in which the error appeared.

But Elaine and many of her classmates at a secondary school in Shamshuipo are not satisfied. She argues that a voluntary additional exam would be the fairest way to solve the problem. 'Candidates should be given one more chance,' she says.

The implications of the error for individual candidates are immense. A-level exams are normally taken when students are in Form Seven, the final year of secondary school, and are the main factor used in allocating university places. Because the exams are extremely important - and difficult - candidates often take them several times. That means candidates who have previously taken the pure maths exam could see their grade drop, thanks to the Examinations Authority's blunder.

Though the maths test mistake might seem headache enough, it is just one of several errors to surface in this year's exams. On the Chinese-language version of the A-level history exam, for example, candidates were asked to explain how global stability was maintained between 1900 and 1945. This is a tall order, considering the period takes in the turn of the century, World War I, the Great Depression and World War II. The question should have read 1919 to 1945, the years after World War I.

The authority has set up a three-member taskforce to investigate why the rash of errors was not caught well before examination day.

The taskforce is focusing its attention on the errors in the pure maths and Chinese language history papers, even though mistakes also surfaced in several other A-level exams and in some Hong Kong Certificate of Education (HKCEE) exams (which are used to decide which students will advance from the first half of secondary school to the second half - that is, from Form Five to Form Six).

Two days into its investigation, the taskforce reached a preliminary conclusion that this year's problems were due to inadequate provisions for proofreading.

But this conclusion is unlikely to pacify education professionals. Au Yeung Chi, the vice-president of the Teachers' Association, likens the problem to documents that must be approved by many departments in a company. He says some people along the way may be a little lazy and inclined to assume that those ahead of them have already verified the details, so they sign off without checking the documents carefully.

Cheung Man-kwong, the Democratic Party legislative councillor representing the education sector, describes the Examinations Authority as 'frivolous' in its approach towards exams. 'The authority has always been careless about minor mistakes, thinking they could be solved by adjusting the scoring curve,' he says. 'But, very often, minor mistakes have resulted in big problems.'

Glossary

dilemma (n) a situation involving undesirable choices

throw out (v) to get rid of something

retain (v) to keep

opt for (v) to choose one thing or course of action instead of another

implication (n) something that is suggested or implied by a particular situation or event

immense (adj) extremely large

tall order (phrase) something that is going to be difficult to solve, but one has to try anyway

pacify (v) to calm others down when they have been upset or angry

frivolous (adj) in a silly and light-hearted way, rather than being serious and sensible

Discussion points

Imagine you work for the Examinations Authority. Would you order a new examination? Or would you let those who volunteer take the examination again?

In case there is a second test, do you think the candidates should pay extra fees for the exam?

What would you suggest to prevent such blunders from happening again?



News review