Teachers, students devastated by major online exam glitch

Teachers are demanding accountability for a major online glitch that affected the biggest exam of the year.

An unknown number of students were unable to log into the online version of the NCEA level 2 English exam on Thursday morning, while others lost their work during or at the end of the assessment.

One student said she was devastated by the failure and a teacher described it as an "unacceptable debacle".

On condition of anonymity, an exam supervisor told RNZ there had been niggling problems for years, but this was easily the worst. She said her colleagues and students had had enough.

The assessment was the biggest NCEA exam, with about 40,000 candidates, but it was not clear how many had chosen to sit it online.

It was the only online exam this morning.

The Qualifications Authority said the problem was "related to the transfer of student responses from the exam platform to our marking platform overnight".

"Schools were advised that, if students were able to continue with digital exams, they should do so," it said. "Students unable to continue digitally were moved to paper exams where this was possible."

NZQA said the problem was resolved at 10.35am.

A teacher told RNZ he was working as a reader/writer for a vulnerable student, when the exam failed.

"This is an unacceptable debacle," he said. "This shouldn't be happening after four years of digi-exams."

Another teacher told RNZ the failure was "a bit of a nightmare".

An exam supervisor said students started the exam at 9.30am, but by 9.45am, "the whole network started to go down".

She said some students were locked out of the exam and could not update their work.

Although they were able to continue, the system was "laggy".

She said online exams had experienced problems for years, but this was the most serious she had seen.

"This was a major glitch," she said. "We couldn't do absolutely anything."

The supervisor said today's problem was too much.

"As supervisors, we've had enough and students have had enough," she said.

Student Molly told RNZ she was able to continue with the exam, but it appeared to lose all of her work, when she attempted to finish and close the assessment.

"I was devastated," she said.

She said putting time and effort into the exam was infuriating, and it would have been better if she hadn't been able to log in at all.

Another student, Finn, said he was about halfway through his work, when the exam failed.

He said he had to switch to paper, which he felt disadvantaged him.

"When this first happened I was like, 'Oh, for XXXX sake, man'," he said.

Post Primary Teachers Association Secondary Principals' Council chair Steve McCracken told RNZ the failure appeared pretty serious.

"It's incredibly disappointing," he said.

"They've had a number of years of testing and trialling, and it seems to be a re-occurence when this happens. It seems to be a regular re-occurence at this point in time.

"Some questions have to be asked around how does this happen and how can we make sure it doesn't happen again in future."

A review published in 2024 [. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/education/515804/review-into-ncea-online-exam-failures-finds-defects-and-inadequate-tests criticised NZQA's relationship with the company] that provided the online exam platform.