Filipino DSE student bags offers from two HK universities

Kazumi Mangaccat, a Filipina who is among 51,000 school students taking the ­Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) exam, secured conditional offers from two local universities on Wednesday.

Mangaccat, an all-time diligent and top performing secondary pupil from Delia Memorial School (Hip Wo), adapted to Chinese language a few years after arriving in Hong Kong – she was 12 when her father moved to the city for work. 

Mangaccat had found Cantonese interesting but difficult, as she did not have much chance to practise the language in her daily life. She told Sing Pao she improved her language skill by watching more local TV dramas.

But with that effort, she achieved the highest grade – A* – for Chinese language in the United Kingdom’s General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination.

Her five best subjects – English (5), Liberal Studies (4), English literature (4), Geography (4) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) (4) – yielded a total score of 21 marks. 

Mangaccat told Ming Pao that she was satisfied with her exam results, including the Chinese language, which is regarded as a “notorious” subject for non-ethnic Chinese students in Hong Kong.

The young Filipina, one of the recipients of the government’s 2016/17 Sir Edward Youde Memorial Prizes for Senior Secondary School Students, has secured offers from the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Kong Baptist University and the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong.