More than 70 schools in mainland China are offering Hong Kong’s university entrance exam courses, with some operators planning for further expansion given the curriculum’s growing demand, the Post has found.

The rising popularity of the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) also prompted calls for Hong Kong authorities to internationalise the assessment launched in 2012 to boost the number of non-local candidates.

At least 72 schools and four tutorial centres in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhejiang and Jiangsu offer the DSE curriculum for students, according to information gathered by the Post.

One of them, TICC Cunzhi Academy, a private school in Shanghai, charges each student 136,000 yuan (US$18,940) a year. Starting with just 15 DSE students in 2022, its enrolment increased fourfold to 60 this year.

“At least in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region, parents have become much more informed about DSE in the past two years,” said the school’s head, Johnny Qian Changsheng.

Qian said that compared with the General Certificate of Education A-levels or the International Baccalaureate (IB), which the school also offered, mainland students were more receptive to DSE, as they could use Chinese in the exams.