334 Scheme

Curriculum

Advantages

• The incorporation of Liberal Studies as a new core subject of the certificate, alongside Chinese, English and Mathematics), targeted to raise students' awareness of world issues and political matters, develop critical and logical reasoning, and experience research processes of data gathering, sifting and analysis through an independent research project, known as IES.

  Disadvantages

• The change in format was an added burden for teachers and students in the transition cohorts.
• Liberal Studies is a new subject, requiring additional training for teachers.
• With the combination of the two public exams into one, there is no longer a first exam to act as a filter. The wide range in the competency among students makes designing the new papers becomes more difficult.
• The exams, first sat in 2012, were considerably easier than internationally accepted exams such as the IB Diploma. Many often achieve high marks. Questions such as "Name five cities mentioned in the magazine article" appeared in the English exam. The history course has been criticised as too easy with 50% of the grade is based on data analysis, which requires little historical knowledge. Others claim that the data-based questions also require candidates to make use of their background knowledge to make sense of the data provided and to express views over controversial statements, as they do in answering the essay-type questions.