Only 26 days before the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) Examination, and 19-year-old Tony Lee sits anxiously, wondering whether he will be allowed to return home in time to write the exam.
He’s been stuck in Wuhan, Hubei province, for over a month.
Two other Hong Kong students are experiencing a similar plight in Hubei, where the outbreak of the novel coronavirus has been most severe.
Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung Yun-hung on Tuesday announced that the HKDSE exam — the university entrance exams in Hong Kong — will begin on March 27 as scheduled.
Lee is scheduled to return to Hong Kong on the first chartered flight from Wuhan, announced last month by the Hong Kong authority. The flight is expected to take off as early as Wednesday. Lee’s first exam, in chemistry, is scheduled for March 28.
He suggests the exams be postponed for a month. It would give him more time to settle in Hong Kong, and the coronavirus epidemic is more likely to ease by then, he explained.
Lee’s schedule for a comprehensive revision for the exams was interrupted on Jan 23, when he learned that Wuhan was on full lockdown due to the severity of the outbreak. He had arrived in the city the day before to visit his 85-year-old grandmother.
He attempted to cut short his visit and return to Hong Kong, but by then all planes and high-speed trains departing from Wuhan had been suspended.
Lee called the Wuhan Economic and Trade Office of the HKSAR Government and the Department of Immigration and explained his situation. Officials told him all he could do was wait for the Hong Kong authority to arrange an evacuation.
Lee’s biggest concern is that he doesn’t have enough textbooks to do a thorough revision.
“Without a printer, I had to look at the test questions on the computer screen and write down my answers on a piece of paper,” said Lee.
Lee got a call from his physics teacher on Tuesday. After explaining in detail the mistakes he had made in the last exercise, the teacher praised him for doing well despite the hardships and expected him to “get a star” — win the highest or second-highest score — in the physics exam.
“That was when I felt eager to take the exams and try my best not to let my teachers down,” said Lee.
There are seven levels of performance of the HKDSE candidates. The distinction levels include 5** for the highest level, and 5* for the second-highest level, and the other 5 levels descending from 5 to 1.
If an examinee fails to take the HKDSE exam, he or she is assigned test scores based on performance at school, according to the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority. However, the highest score that an absent candidate can get is a 5 — the third-highest level in the grading system.
