Hong Kong exams body to file police report over alleged online leak of test content
- Reports claim user on mainland China’s Xiaohongshu platform allegedly uploaded question and answer book of this year’s English-language listening test
- Screenshot showed user claimed to be educator at secondary school in Hong Kong and taught online tutorial classes for students newly arrived from mainland
Hong Kong’s examination authority has said it will file a report to police after content from the ongoing university entrance tests was allegedly leaked on a popular social media platform in mainland China by a self-proclaimed teacher.
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.”
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.
The Facebook post said it could involve misappropriation of exam materials by invigilators, and someone from Dcard had filed a complaint to the authority.
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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 user on Xiaohongshu also wrote that she or he was currently an educator at a secondary school and taught online tutorial classes for students newly arrived from the mainland.
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The Post 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.
