Hong Kong's new Diploma of Secondary Education gets thumbs up from Oxbridge

British universities are embracing Hong Kong's Diploma of Secondary Education "with open arms".

Oxford and Cambridge are among the universities that have already confirmed offers to students who sat the new exams this year, the British Council says.

"UK universities are welcoming DSE students with open arms," the council's head of education and society, Sophia Chan-Combrink, said yesterday. "Even Oxbridge has been able to make confirmed offers to DSE students. This marks a huge step in Hong Kong's educational reform."

However at the British Council's Education UK exhibition held yesterday, a student was told by representatives from one university that his combined science DSE - a new subject under the new curriculum - was not admissible.

As students and parents were scrambling to put in last-minute applications at the event, which continues today, Janson Lau Ka-ki, 18, learned that combined science, one of his seven subjects, would not be accepted by the University of East Anglia.

"I showed them my results and they immediately said they wouldn't consider that subject," he said.