After sitting the HKCEE and having their examination results announced, candidates could apply for a place in sixth form in local schools in Hong Kong.
Moreover, to qualify for the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE), students had to pass certain requirements of HKCEE as a prerequisite.
For the examination questions on the same topics, those in HKCEE tended to be loaded with unclear wordings and difficult manipulations,[clarification needed] compared with their NCEA counterparts.
Students with 14 marks above, including passes in English and one other Language subject have an advantage as they can be admitted from the first stage of Form 6 admissions.
Students scoring 30 marks (the maximum) with L4/C in two designated language subjects (one of which must be English) in their first attempt will be permitted to apply to the Direct Entry for the 3 major Universities in Hong Kong (see below).
[clarification needed] Requirements of sitting in HKALE are independent from Form 6 admissions since they are managed by separate organisations.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in addition, did not accept "combined certificates" (results obtained in more than two examinations) and must be fulfilled in a single attempt (usually the first one).
Although HKEAA examinations have been widely accepted, some universities have set particular criteria for the admission of overseas students.
For instance, the University of Cambridge in the UK has set out admission requirements for underage or minor candidates concerning guardianship arrangements.
These include, for example, the National Higher Education Entrance Examination for universities in mainland China and the SAT for the United States.
The two new HKCEE language subjects have been benchmarked against the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) by the Cambridge Assessment.
The HKCEE results in Chinese Language and English Language are recognised as equivalent to the IGCSE results as follows: While the HKEAA have been publishing booklets of past examination papers of each subject at an affordable price, the marking schemes (i.e. official detailed solutions) of past examinations were never readily available to the public.
The official argument from the HKEAA for not publishing these marking schemes was that it might be "pedagogically unsound" and would encourage "rote memorisation" behaviour from students.
Hence, the policy of the HKEAA indirectly denied less privileged students from gaining access to information pertaining to how examination papers are scored.
Moreover, according to media reports, some so-called "star tutors" managed to earn more than HK$7 million per annum (~US$900,000), leading some to speculate that the HKEAA's policy had indirectly transferred large amounts of wealth to these cram schools.
The Authority was gradually implementing school-based assessment to all subjects, to reduce stress on students due to studying for exams.
Starting from 2006, two subjects—Chinese History and History—had been implemented with the school-based assessment, replacing the previous multiple choice paper in public examinations.
Further investigations revealed that he was the son of Mak Cheung Wah, then an assistant senior subject panel of the HKEA.
Mak stole his colleagues' keys and reproduced them to enable him to open the safe deposits to obtain and photocopy question papers and marking schemes in every subject for his son to read prior to the examinations.
[5][6] In 2005, the oral component of the Syllabus B English language examination was incorrectly added to the total score because of a recent upgrade to the HKEAA computer system, and the supervisor in charge failed to double-check the results.
In an attempt to mitigate the situation, the HKEAA publicly apologised and offered free rechecks on the oral component of the English language subject for all candidates.
[7] A proofreading exercise in Paper 2 of the HKCEE English Language (Syllabus B) quoted a message that was adapted from an online forum.
That caused the HKEAA to hold several internal meetings banning the use of messages from the online forum.
The actual articles used in the exam: In 2007 HKCEE Chinese Language Paper 2 (Writing), Question 2 'Lemon Tea' was suspected to be leaked beforehand since a tutor, Siu Yuen from King's Glory Education Centre gave his students a sample article of a similar title, 'Iced Lemon Tea', well before the exam.
For example, in question 5, the four choices were "believable" (可以相信), "affirmative" (肯定的是), "proved by facts" (事實證明) and "undeniable" (無可否認).
A Halloween advertisement was included in the recording, and some candidates afterward said that they felt uneasy or thought the radio channel was switched.
In the data file, Chinese slang terms were discussed in an extract from a newspaper article and in a poster promoting reading.
The Authority responded that, as is the norm, some of the materials provided were deliberately false or worthless to promote critical thinking and choice-taking by students.
[9] On YouTube and Internet forums, ringtones of the recording appeared after the paper, including the imitation of Cantopop duo Twins singing their song, "Lian Ai Da Guo Tian" (戀愛大過天, Love Is More Important Than Anything), and the recording of the Halloween advertisement.
[10] As a regular practice, the HKEAA published past papers, marking schemes and examination reports every year.