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Advance Placement for Secondary Six Students

The University Grants Committee (UGC) announced today (22 January 2003) the decision to continue the Advance Placement Scheme for Secondary Six Students for the 2003/04 academic year and onwards. The UGC has also endorsed the following set of guidelines for institutions to follow:

  1. Participation in the Scheme is entirely voluntary.

  2. Participating institutions should draw up a common mechanism in order to ensure that the Scheme is executed in an open and fair manner.

  3. A secondary six student will be qualified to apply under the Scheme if he/she has obtained :

    1. at least 6A's in one HKCEE sitting;

    2. Grade 'C' or above in Chinese Language in HKCEE; and

    3. Grade 'C' or above in English Language (Syllabus B) in HKCEE (or Grade 'A' in Syllabus A, but this Grade A should not be counted in (i) above).

  4. Participating institutions are free to draw up additional admission criteria on top of the above for individual programmes.

  5. The duration of study for students admitted under the Scheme should be left to the participating institutions.

  6. There will be no quota system for the Scheme.

"This Scheme would provide flexibility for outstanding students to enter the UGC sector one year earlier", Dr Alice Lam, Chairman of the UGC said.

"While the duration of study is for participating institutions to decide, institutions should put in place special arrangements to ensure that the students admitted enjoy a full university education. Arrangements like additional credit requirements, special classes, attachments and exchange programmes are encouraged," Dr Lam emphasized.

It is expected that institutions will soon announce recruitment arrangements based on the new guidelines.

The Advance Placement Scheme for Secondary Six Students was first introduced by seven UGC-funded institutions for the 2002 entry. It was intended to run on a small scale as an exceptional scheme for exceptional students. 240 secondary six students were admitted in the 2002/03 academic year.


UGC Secretariat
22 January 2003