IT WAS a good show from this year's Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination with a record-breaking five students scoring the maximum 10 distinctions each and at least 19 others getting nine As.
A total of 118,516 candidates sat for the exam this year, marking a drop of 7.74 per cent from last year, although the overall pass rate was almost the same with 62.94 per cent compared with 62.98 per cent last year.
As with last year, English Literature saw the highest pass rate. Of the 912 candidates sitting for the exam, over 89 per cent got Grade E or above.
The poorest results were in Physical Education. Nearly 60 per cent of the 383 candidates who took the exam failed.
The Hong Kong Examinations Authority this year recorded three cases of cheating, which led to disqualification from the entire examination; another nine cases involving a variety of serious breaches of the examination regulations which led to subject disqualification.
This year also saw a significant drop in the number of cases that candidates received mark penalties for less serious breaches of the regulations such as using unapproved calculators (a 50 per cent drop over last year) and improperly including their names in their answer scripts (a 46 per cent drop).