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Almost 11 500 university students participate in CEPAS

The University Grants Committee (UGC) announced today (April 12) that almost 11 500 final year students of UGC-funded undergraduate degree programmes have registered for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) under the eleventh round of the Common English Proficiency Assessment Scheme (CEPAS).

"With the assistance of our institutions, the eleventh round of registration for the Scheme in 2012/13 has been completed successfully. A total of 11 494 final year students have submitted their applications this time. Given the voluntary nature of CEPAS, the number of participants demonstrates that students continue to attach great importance to their English proficiency," said Dr Richard Armour, Secretary-General of the UGC.

CEPAS was first launched in 2002/03. In the past years, the participation number grew steadily and stablised in recent years, from around 7 300 final-year students in 2002/03 to over 11 800 in 2011/12.

There are a total of 45 testing sessions in the 2012/13 round of CEPAS. To facilitate students' participation, online registration and summer test sessions have been made available to participants. In this round, over 99% of students chose to register online. In addition, more than 4 100 students have registered to take part in the 18 summer testing sessions.

A breakdown of the number of participants by institution is at the Annex for reference.


Annex

Number of Participants in
the Common English Proficiency Assessment Scheme in 2012/13

 

Institution 2012/13
No. of participants*1
Percentage of its projected graduates
City University of Hong Kong 2 137 69%
Hong Kong Baptist University 1 019 60%
Lingnan University 499 71%
The Chinese University of Hong Kong 2 134 61%
The Hong Kong Institute of Education*2 468 65%
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University 2 135 66%
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 1 335 64%
The University of Hong Kong 1 767 50%
Total :
11 494 60%

*1 The figures exclude the students who take IELTS outside the Scheme at their own expense before they proceed to the final year of studies.

*2 459 of the 468 candidates from HKIEd are full-time students, accounting for 65% of projected graduates from full-time programmes in 2012/13. The 468 candidates account for 40% of projected graduates of all programmes in 2012/13.