Follow Hong Kong Immigration and Hong Kong Education: A student teacher of Liberal Studies at a secondary school was arrested by the police last week for allegedly stealing and selling the Independent Enquiry Study (IES) assignments of students taking the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) examination during his internship, and for providing high-scoring IES assignments for tutoring students to "reference."
Reports indicate that the individual involved is a student teacher at Tuen Mun Baptist Wing Lung Secondary School who has already completed his internship. Principal Tam Yat-yuk of Wing Lung Secondary School expressed regret over the incident, noting that the school has a responsibility to cultivate future teachers and is therefore willing to provide internship positions to major institutions every year. He stated that they did not expect such an incident to occur, and as the matter is now being handled by the police, he will not provide further comments.
The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) declined to comment on the specific case. It stated that teachers are the most familiar with students' abilities and work progress, so schools and subject teachers are responsible for verifying the authenticity of student work. Through appropriate monitoring, irregularities such as plagiarism should be detectable. The authority will review the scores and samples of assignments submitted by schools and will follow up on any abnormal cases discovered.
An HKEAA spokesperson stated that the authority specifies in the "Candidate Handbook" that assignments submitted by students must be the candidate's own work. During the process of completing assessment tasks, students must remember not to commit any irregularities. If an Independent Enquiry Study is confirmed to be plagiarized, it will be subject to severe penalties, including mark deductions, downgrading, or the cancellation of examination results for part or all of the subjects.
Reports suggest that the student teacher allegedly downloaded students' Liberal Studies IES assignments without authorization last year and sold one of them for HK$1,200 on an online forum. He was arrested by the police on suspicion of dishonest use of a computer. Sources indicate that the downloaded and sold assignment was an Independent Enquiry Study from the first DSE examination, which accounts for 20% of the Liberal Studies subject score. The teacher reportedly contacted the buyer through a forum called lsforum.net.