Exam hope for students caught up in breakout

Hundreds of Ma On Shan students who were held up in traffic because of a mass breakout at Whitehead detention centre may have their marks adjusted.

A committee at the Examinations Authority will discuss the issue before releasing the results of this year's Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination on Wednesday.

On May 10, about 600 students in Ma On Shan almost missed their English language listening tests as police set up roadblocks to check for Vietnamese boat people escaped from Whitehead.

Thomas Cheung Kwong-yuen, the authority's senior subject officer, said they had received hundreds of complaints from candidates who claimed to be affected in the incident.

More than 10 students said they missed the whole exams because they could not reach the exam centres. Another dozen students complained they arrived late and missed part of the test.

Several hundred students said they could not concentrate on the exam because of the chaotic situation they had faced that day.

Mr Cheung said: 'These students are worried that their performances were affected. We are studying these cases and see how they should be handled in a fair way.

'Normally students who fail to reach their exam centres and miss the test could have their marks assessed based on the results of other papers in that subject.

'But since these cases are quite complicated they may be handled in different ways.' He said the authority would sort that out before the release of the HKCEE results next week. About 120,000 students are due to get their result slips on Wednesday.

The authority will also review how it supplies the tape used for the exam. Its English language officer, Christina Lee Wong-wai, also a Ma On Shan resident, was caught in traffic taking the tape to RTHK for broadcast that morning.