While the HKEAA have been publishing booklets of past examination papers of each subject at an affordable price, the marking schemes (i.e. official detailed solutions) of past examinations were never readily available to the public. The official argument from the HKEAA for not publishing these marking schemes was that it might be "pedagogically unsound" and would encourage "rote memorisation" behaviour from students. Nevertheless, students were often able to obtain these "restricted documents" by taking classes at cram schools. Hence, the policy of the HKEAA indirectly denied less privileged students from gaining access to information pertaining to how examination papers are scored. This might have created a socio-economic bias in the ability of students to obtain good results in the HKCEE. Moreover, according to media reports, some so-called "star tutors" managed to earn more than HK$7 million per annum (US$900,000), leading some to speculate that the HKEAA's policy had indirectly transferred large amounts of wealth to these cram schools.
Several examiners reported to the HKEA that a candidate scored almost full marks in almost every paper he sat and his answers were identical to those in the marking schemes and even included the typing mistakes. The HKEA suspected that someone had improperly obtained the question papers and marking schemes in advance of the examinations. The case was referred to the ICAC for investigation. The ICAC found that the candidate had been an under-achiever at school and was not expected to get high grades. Further investigations revealed that he was the son of Mak Cheung Wah, then an assistant senior subject panel of the HKEA. Mak stole his colleagues' keys and reproduced them to enable him to open the safe deposits to obtain and photocopy question papers and marking schemes in every subject for his son to read prior to the examinations. Mak's son memorised the answers and wrote them on the answer scripts to score high marks. The ICAC only managed to solve the case and arrested the pair moments before the release of the results. Mak pleaded guilty to allowing unauthorised persons to have access to confidential examination documents. He was ordered by the Eastern Magistrates' Court to do 220 hours of community service. He was also dismissed by the HKEA and lost his entitlement to pension amounted to HK$720,000. His son was disqualified by the HKEA and his grades were annulled. Since then, the HKEA and the ICAC reviewed and revised the security arrangements of examination documents.[5][6]
Hkcee Chemistry Marking Scheme 2006
As a regular practice, the HKEAA published past papers, marking schemes and examination reports every year. In previous years, only past papers were available; most subjects put past papers of the previous 5 years in a joint edition (except English and Putonghua, which had a tape/CD). Marking schemes were to be given only to markers. 2ff7e9595c
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