- A user on the Xiaohongshu platform, similar to Instagram, reportedly uploaded the question and answer book for the DSE English listening test
- The netizen claimed to be an educator at a secondary school and taught online tutorial classes for students newly arrived from the mainland
The Hong Kong exams body will file a police report over an alleged online leak of test content. Photo: May TseHong Kong’s examination authority says the contents of the current university entrance exams have been allegedly leaked on a widely used social media platform in mainland China by a self-proclaimed teacher. The authority will file a report with the police on the matter.
The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority was responding on Tuesday to reports that a user on the popular Instagram-like Xiaohongshu platform had allegedly uploaded the question and answer book for this year’s English-language listening test.
“The [authority] is seriously following up with cases of people reposting or posting the content of examination questions on the internet and will report them to the police,” its spokesman said.
“If it is confirmed that an examination personnel has breached the confidentiality agreement, we will take appropriate follow-up actions in accordance with the established procedures.”
According to the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority Ordinance, all officers appointed or employed by the body, including examination personnel for the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams, are required to maintain confidentiality with respect to what they learn in the course of carrying out their duties.
A Facebook page under the name Edu Lancet on Monday wrote that an account on Xiaohongshu had posted photos of the exam questions with a watermark that read “Ms. Lucy” and a caption saying the invigilation of the exam had been completed.
The post was first exposed in a DSE forum on Dcard, an online social media platform based in Taiwan, according to the Facebook post.
It said the question and answer book belonged to Paper 3 of the English-language test taken on April 13. Students were required to submit the testing materials and were banned from taking them after the exam was over.
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The Facebook post said it could involve misappropriation of exam materials by invigilators, and someone from Dcard had filed a complaint to the authority.
A screenshot of the Xiaohongshu account included in the post showed the user claimed they arrived in Hong Kong during secondary school and held a bachelor’s degree from Hong Kong Shue Yan University and a master’s degree from the University of Hong Kong.
The SCMP on Tuesday found that all posts and descriptions had been deleted from the Xiaohongshu account.
The authority said it had reminded all officers at examination centres they were prohibited from reposting or posting exam questions in any form without approval. If such acts were suspected to be illegal, the authority would pass the matter onto law enforcement agencies, it added.