NZQA's deputy chief executive Jann Marshall says about 16,000 students logged into the digital exam platform for the NCEA level 2 English exam on Wednesday and it was performing as expected. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) says there was no repeat of log-in problems during a big online exam on Wednesday morning.
The authority's deputy chief executive Jann Marshall said about 16,000 students logged into the digital exam platform for the NCEA level 2 English exam and it was performing as expected with no issues.
Teachers had been worried the large number of students would slow the system forcing NZQA to block log-ins, as happened on Friday after about 18,000 students logged-in for the level 1 English exam.
They said hundreds of students had to complete their exam on paper and some students who lost connection with the exam part-way through also had to switch to paper.
A similar problem also happened two weeks ago during online NCEA literacy and numeracy tests.
Marshall said about 22,000 students had indicated they would sit Wednesday's level 2 exam digitally, making it the second-largest digital exam after level 1 English.
"Typically, around 20 percent of students do not attend an exam they are entered for. In addition, some students entered digitally decide to complete their exam on paper instead, Marshall said.
"The number of students expected to attempt the digital exam this morning is therefore lower than the number who were able to log into the digital exam platform on Friday morning."
Marshall said NZQA understood how stressful the disruption experienced over the last two weeks was for some students and schools.
She said the organisation was looking at how to apply derived grades for students who experienced disadvantage.
