Commentary
Last year the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (equivalent to GCE Advanced Level) History examination was full of factual inaccuracies, ambiguities, and repetitive answers; are there any improvements this year?
The 2022 exam papers and marking scheme were recently published, and I got a copy as soon as it was out. As expected, the situation has become worse to the extent that the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, which runs the exam, find it difficult to use quotation marks properly. Based on the marking scheme (hereafter as “the document”), some observations are listed below.
(a) Question 1c, Paper 1 asks whether Japan could be regarded as a strong and westernized country during 1900-26. The document explains that evidence of Japan as a strong country is that “Japan was one of the members in the League of Nations.” The logic behind this assertion is that membership in the League of Nations was a symbol of national strength. Is it true? Among the 63 members of the League, were they–including Abyssinia, which was invaded by Italy in 1935–all “strong countries?” Most importantly, as China was a founding member, the document’s argument is tantamount to saying that the Chinese communists’ current claim “China was a weak country before 1949” is a false proposition.
(b) Question 1b, Paper 1 asks about two characteristics of Japan’s elementary education in the early 20th century. The document suggests “co-education” and “diversified learning” as answers. At first glance, there seems nothing wrong with this. However, the question word “characteristic” means something special out of the ordinary. For example, in Hong Kong, education is trilingual (English, Cantonese, and Mandarin); one cannot say that a characteristic of a local school’s curriculum is English teaching, nor can one say a characteristic of China politics is that “it has a central government.” The document’s suggested “characteristics” are common in modern elementary education practiced globally. Can these uncharacteristic characteristics be counted as characteristics?
(c) Question 2a, Paper 1 asks about the major change in the economic development of Hong Kong in the second half of the 20th century. The document suggests “from industrial development to diversified development” as the answer, based on the clue that “As the industrial sector matured, the local economy needed to diversify to sustain a high rate of growth.” Here, the Authority made a cognitive mistake by confusing what had changed with what needed to change. As a result, the Authority failed to answer the question it designed.
(d) Question 1, Paper 2 requires candidates to illustrate the statement “China attempted different explorations in modernization in the first half of the 20th century,” with reference to China’s political development between 1900-49. The document requires a discussion of the “socialist system.” Here contains a fundamental factual error: 1949-53 was what is known as the “new democracy,” and socialist transformation did not take place until 1953. The relevancy of “socialism” is questionable for a question that ends with the year 1949, when the new regime was just founded.
(e) Paper 1 sets four questions, two for Asian history and two for European, each with three sub-questions. For the six sub-questions for the Asian part, the document mentions “diversified” or “diverse” four times as suggested answers. The ability of the Authority to design questions that do not repeat the answers is questionable.
(f) Clerical accuracy is another matter of concern. The English and Chinese versions of a part of the document are contradictory because of the wrong use of a word. The ability to use punctuation marks properly is also questionable. When quoting from the question paper, the Authority changed the words in quotes. In one such case, when quoting “if Germany attacked France,” the word “if” was changed to “in case of,” causing a grammatical mistake. In another case of abrupt insertion of “Germanys’” in a quote about Germany in the decade before the First World War, does the Authority think there were two Germanys at that time?
These sloppy things did not only happen in History. Lo Ka-yiu, former HKEAA senior manager for Liberal Studies, commented on social media about the Liberal Studies exam this year. “Many questions are vague, biased, and difficult to answer; they failed to effectively assess candidates’ critical thinking, subject knowledge, and essential concepts.” “Candidates may merely copy information [from the exam paper]” to get high marks. He concludes that “I will not comment on the political correctness of the Liberal Studies exam paper, but it’s a shame that it fails to meet the basic requirements of assessment design.”
Since 2020, the chaos of the HKEAA has seemed to be unstoppable. Problems are holistic, from conceptual and factual to grammatical and punctuation errors. All these errors point to deeper institutional corruption: the Authority exhibits a serious lack of professionals that errors of all kinds can survive all phases of assessment planning and production until published. HKEAA claimed that “subject experts” from the Education Bureau would help improve the exam mechanism, but in the end, they seem to become part of the corruption. Patriotic Hong Kong legislator Junius Ho Kwan-yiu commented that the Hong Kong sevens team “lost our confidence” after a wrong national anthem was played at the Seoul tournament, and the team should be disbanded. Following this logic, it should not be too much to ask for the disbanding of the HKEAA as it continues to prove incapable of correcting problems in the exams it administers and loses our confidence.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
