Beyond language barriers: ethnic minority students shine in Hong Kong DSE tests

South China Morning Post

16-07-2025

At Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College in Hong Kong, Smriti Kedia witnessed her mother burst into tears when her daughter's near-perfect results in Hong Kong's university entrance exams came in.
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'It was just like a big sigh of relief,' said Kedia, who received four 5** grades and two 5* grades, the top two levels of a seven-level scale of the exams.
She was among 55,000 students who received their Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) results on Wednesday. Kedia, 18, who moved to Hong Kong from India at the age of one, is also part of the 8 per cent of non-Chinese Hongkongers, according to the Hong Kong Census.
Despite her impressive results, Kedia's journey to success was not smooth sailing.
'In kindergarten and primary school, we definitely learned [Cantonese], but it was very basic and so ...I still found it really difficult to have daily conversations with my classmates or my neighbours,' she said. 'So I never really was able to connect with them.'
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Everything changed for Kedia once she realised in secondary school that she wanted to become a doctor in Hong Kong.