INVIGILATOR HELD OVER EXAM LEAK
Woman arrested on suspicion of uploading DSE paper, which authority says occurred after test
A 23-year-old invigilator has been arrested on suspicion of posting content of ongoing university entrance exams on social media, the Post has learned.
The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority yesterday said the incident had not affected the integrity of the test as the leak occurred after it took place.
Police said the woman, surnamed Lau, was arrested on suspicion of violating the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority Ordinance.
A source told the Post she was one of the invigilators for the city’s
Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams, and also worked as a teaching assistant in a secondary school.
The insider added that it could not be ruled out that the woman committed the crime to benefit her own tutorial businesses.
She has been granted bail pending investigation and is required to report to police in mid-May.
The case was still under investigation, police said.
The authority said preliminary evidence suggested that the person leaked the information after the related subject exams had finished.
“The confidentiality of DSE has not been affected,” it said.
According to the Hong Kong
Examinations and Assessment Authority Ordinance, all appointees of the authority, including DSE examination personnel, should ensure secrecy while performing their duties.
“The authority has reminded the examination personnel of all examination centres that it is strictly prohibited to reproduce or publish the content of examination papers in any format without the approval of the [authority],” it said.
The authority filed a report on Tuesday to police after a user on the popular mainland social media platform Xiaohongshu allegedly uploaded the question and answer book for this year’s English-language listening test. The test in question belonged to paper 3 of the English-language test taken on Saturday, according to a post on a Facebook page named Edu Lancent on Monday.
The Xiaohongshu post was first exposed in a DSE forum on Dcard, an online social media platform based in Taiwan, according to the Facebook post.
A screenshot of the Xiaohongshu account included in the post showed the user claiming to have come to the city during secondary school and holding a bachelor’s degree from Hong Kong Shue Yan University as well as a master’s degree from the University of Hong Kong.
The account also stated the user was an educator at a secondary school and taught online tutorial classes for students newly arrived from the mainland.
The Post earlier found that all posts and descriptions had been deleted from the Xiaohongshu account.
Separately, the exam authority yesterday condemned those who circulated an “entirely false” marking scheme for this year’s DSE papers concerning the Citizenship and Social Development subject. It stressed that DSE papers and marking schemes were highly confidential.