The proportion of non-Chinese-speaking students who sat the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams and were admitted to public universities has remained persistently low over the past five academic years, with no clear signs of improvement.
Veteran educators teaching these pupils, classified by the government as NCS students, attribute the trend to three key factors: high failure rates in core mathematics; deficiencies in Chinese-language studies; and insufficient performance targets set by schools despite significant public funding.
According to data from the Education Bureau and the University Grants Committee, the proportion of NCS students sitting the DSE who secured government-funded undergraduate places averaged around 10 percent annually for the past five academic years. In 2020-21 and 2021-22, the NCS student admission rate stood at 8.8 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively. It later rose to 12.2 percent in 2022-23, then declined to 11.6 percent the following year and further dropped to 10.5 percent in 2024-25.
This trend starkly contrasts with the rate for the general student population, where a quarter of all DSE school candidates proceed to study at publicly funded universities.
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