Ten students have achieved perfect scores in this year's university entrance exams, up from four last year, while an overwhelming majority of Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exam candidates passed the new citizenship and social development subject.

The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority on Tuesday said eight male and two female pupils got a perfect 5** across six subjects and earned "attained" in the new citizenship subject that replaced liberal studies, with eight of them also acing an extended mathematics module.

The top scorers are among more than 49,000 DSE exam candidates who will receive their results on Wednesday.

More than 17,600 daytime secondary school pupils, or roughly 43 percent, met the minimum requirement needed for a publicly-funded university place, known as "332A22".

It means scoring at least level 3 in both Chinese and English, level 2 in maths, and “attained” in the citizenship and social development subject, as well as level 2 in two electives.

Officials said 94.1 percent of candidates sitting the new subject achieved an "attained" level.

Wei Xiangdong, the authority's secretary general, said the introduction of the subject, graded with “attained” or “unattained”, was not a factor when it came to the increase in top-performing students this year.

"I don't think it makes it easier to gain so many 5**, because all the other subjects, their assessment criteria did not change, and we used standard referencing every year. It should be equally difficult or easy to get 5** in other subjects," Wei said.

Ricardo Mak, the director of public examinations, stressed that a number of overseas institutions recognise the new subject, including world-renowned universities.

“Cambridge University, Simon Fraser University in Canada and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore also require students to have the ‘attained’ level in this subject to be admitted to their academic programmes,” he said.

The exams authority also said it’s highly concerned that question-and-answer booklet content had been uploaded to social media platform Xiaohongshu, a move which resulted in a woman’s arrest.

But officials said the incident did not affect the confidentiality of the exam questions, as such content was posted online after the tests had taken place.

The exams body added there are no plans right now to significantly expand the number of testing sites across the border after holding the exams at two centres in the Greater Bay Area this year.