Mixed reactions about the HKDSE BAFS exam garners, though it refrains from including unusual questions like last year
Business, Accounting and Financial Studies paper was a challenge to some but a breeze for others, while tutors say the difficulty was average
The BAFS paper didn't include unusual questions like last year's exam.Students had mixed reactions to today’s business, accounting and financial studies (BAFS) HKDSE exam, with tutors saying that the papers had an average level of difficulty.
All students had to complete Paper One, and for Paper Two, they had a choice between the accounting paper or management paper.
Ling Leung, a BAFS tutor from Modern Education, said Paper One was similar to last year’s paper. “The topics covered in section A appeared regularly in previous years,” she said. “The questions were not as unusual as those on last year’s paper.”
She said that students might trip up on question four of the accounting Paper Two. If students could not identify that part A of the question was referring to the start of the year, and part B was referring to the end, they may use the wrong data to answer the question, she said.
Roi Joshua Abad Cruz, 18, from PAOC Ka Chi Secondary School, took the accounting paper. He said both papers were easier than expected, with only a few troubling multiple-choice questions in Paper One.
“I found none of the questions particularly difficult,” Roi said, but noted that Q7 of the accounting Paper Two was a bit more challenging. “Although the concept was easy, marking down all of the changes was difficult and took a lot of time.”
Leung Yuet-yee, 17, from Heep Yunn School, also took the accounting paper. She found the questions in Section C of the accounting paper challenging. She said Paper One was easier than Paper Two.
“As it is one of my worst subjects, I think my performance was quite poor,” she added.
Andy Yeung, a tutor from Beacon College, said several multiple-choice questions were slightly tricky, but the short answer questions in Paper One were easier.
Yeung said students may have found the first question in the multiple-choice section confusing. “Many students might think that Hong Kong is not a founding member of the World Trade Organisation [WTO],” he said. They may have been misled by the answer to a question from the 2016 paper that seemed to suggest the opposite, he added.
Yeung also said that many of his students that took the English version of the paper could not answer Q14 on Paper One correctly, which was about social responsibility, because they did not know the word “orphanages”.