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Education

Unrestricted School Choices and parents may choose not more than three schools from any school nets for their child. The remaining 90 per cent of CA places are for Restricted School Choices. Parents can choose a maximum of 30 schools from the school net to which their child belongs.

Students completing junior secondary education will normally remain in the same school for their senior secondary education or attend full-time fully subvented vocational training courses. run by the Vocational Training Council.

The Curriculum

The Hong Kong school curriculum provides five essential learning experiences for students: moral and civic education, intellectual development, community service, physical and aesthetic development, and career-related experiences for lifelong learning and whole-person development. The school curriculum is regularly reviewed to keep abreast of the latest developments. Curriculum renewal progresses in tandem with schools' adaptation of the central curriculum to meet their students' needs. The aim is to nurture students' general capabilities, positive values and attitudes, and self-directed learning capabilities.

Senior Secondary Curriculum

The New Senior Secondary (NSS) curriculum launched in September 2009 is flexible, coherent and diversified and aims to cater for students' varied interests, needs, aptitudes and abilities. Students take four core subjects and acquire Other Learning Experiences such as community service and career-related experiences. In addition, they can choose two or three elective subjects from 20 NSS subjects, a range of Applied Learning (ApL) courses and six other language subjects.

ApL courses are offered mainly at Secondary 5 and 6. They place equal emphasis on practice and theory linked to broad professional and vocational fields. In the 2014-16 cohort, 36 ApL courses are offered under six areas of studies: Creative Studies; Media and Communication; Business, Management and Law; Services; Applied Science; and Engineering and Production.

On completion of their senior secondary study at Secondary 6, students can take the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) Examination.

The HKDSE has gained extensive recognition in international benchmarking studies such as the National Recognition Information Centre report and the Tariff System of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service in the United Kingdom. The Australian Government recognised the HKDSE as comparable to the Australian Senior Secondary School Certificate in 2008. Over 190 tertiary institutions worldwide, including renowned universities such as Oxford and Yale, have recognised the new qualification for admission purposes, and more are being added.

Under the State Ministry of Education's Scheme for Admission of Hong Kong Students to Mainland Higher Education Institutions rolled out in the 2012-13 academic year, some Mainland higher education institutions admit Hong Kong students on the basis of their results in the HKDSE Examination and exempt them from taking the Joint Entrance Examination for Universities in the Mainland. More than 9,700 Hong Kong students submitted applications

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