The Education Bureau today clarified an incident involving erroneous SMS notifications sent to local parents regarding Primary One Admission (POA) and expressed its deepest apologies for any inconvenience caused.

The bureau noted that according to preliminary investigations, the results of the Central Allocation for POA, originally scheduled to be announced starting tomorrow, were mistakenly sent ahead of schedule today due to an operational error in the sending procedure of the system.

Upon learning of the incident, the bureau immediately took action to correct the procedure.

To safeguard the interests of every student, the bureau immediately conducted a comprehensive and rigorous review of the allocation information for all students after the incident. It clarified to parents that the SMS notifications this morning do not affect the allocation results.

The bureau also notified parents via SMS this morning advising them to disregard the earlier SMS notifications regarding POA. It also appealed to parents not to contact the schools hastily.

The bureau has immediately set up dedicated hotlines (2832 7700/2832 7740) to respond to parents' enquiries. All official POA results with complete and accurate registration details will be released starting from 7.30am tomorrow as originally scheduled.

The bureau emphasised that its information systems have been operating reliably. After an immediate and thorough check by the technical team, it was confirmed that the systems were not subject to any cyberattack or hacker intrusion. The core database remains intact.

This incident is entirely unrelated to information security or cybersecurity. The personal data of parents and students are highly encrypted and protected.

The bureau attaches great importance to the incident and has immediately set up a crisis management team to follow up on the matter, and will conduct a comprehensive review of the systems, procedures and manpower support. If any negligence by personnel or procedural errors are found, it will seriously follow up the matter.

The bureau will further enhance the monitoring processes of the systems and dissemination mechanisms to prevent similar incidents from recurring.