Fairness and security of DSE won’t be affected by mainland school venues, says exam watchdog

The DSE exams beginning next Tuesday will remain fair, safe and confidential despite having two schools from Shenzhen and Guangzhou as the exam venues in the mainland this year, the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority said. 

At a media briefing on Wednesday, chairman Samuel Yung Wing-ki said the delivery of the exam papers is safe and confidential and the authority has a number of back-up plans to encounter different emergencies. 

The same set of standards will be applied to the exam venues both in Hong Kong and in the mainland, he added, saying that the authority has repeatedly rehearsed relevant arrangements. 

Based on this year’s experiences, the authority will later decide arrangements about establishing DSE exam venues in the Greater Bay Area next year. 

This year, the two mainland exam venues are Shenzhen Hong Kong Pui Kiu College Longhua Xinyi School and Affiliated School of Jinan University for Hong Kong and Macao Students. 

Yung continued that the papers will be locked in a safe in the security rooms of the schools upon delivery and will only be opened and unsealed on the day of the exam. 

The security rooms will also be guarded 24/7 and monitored by security cameras, the footage of which will be available to staffers in Hong Kong as well. 

Yung added that the DSE is widely recognized overseas and is accepted by prominent universities like Oxford and Cambridge in the UK as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. 

The authority’s secretary general Wei Xiang-dong also echoed Yung and cited results of a questionnaire participated by some 150 secondary schools early this year, saying that over 100 overseas universities have given local students conditional offers. 

He said he has never heard that the recognition of the DSE is affected by the new Citizenship and Social Development subject, which replaces the previous Liberal Studies subject. 

Wei mentioned that over 600 institutes have listed their general admission requirements on the authority’s website and said the authority will continue to promote the DSE to universities across the globe.