The chief executive of the NZ Qualifications Authority has apologised after a digital platform crashed midway through yesterday’s English Level 2 exam – but he couldn’t say it wouldn’t happen again.
The glitch on Thursday morning is thought to have affected up to 40,000 students, with some left panicked and in tears after their work was wiped.
Many students then scrambled to sit the exams with pen and paper while some abandoned the exam altogether and have been advised they can use their derived grades from sitting previous “mock” exams.
NZQA confirmed the problem with its digital exam platform was resolved at 10.35am, about 35 minutes after it started.
NZQA chief executive Christian Hawkesby told Mike Hosking that NZQA was sorry for the disruption to students, and recognised it was a very stressful time for students and their parents.
“We identified an issue during the exam, we worked with our vendor to identify it and resolve it as quickly as we could.
“The system is back up and running and stable and we had exams through yesterday afternoon.”
But asked how confident he was that it wouldn’t happen again, Hawkesby didn’t give a firm answer.
“We’ve worked with the provider and we are testing the system. It is stable. We can do further testing ahead of next week.”
There were no exams today, but the largest exam was scheduled next Tuesday and NZQA was preparing for that.
Paper copies were available for that exam “to give comfort for students” that there was a contingency in place, he said.
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