NZQA is continuing work on its digital assessment platform to prevent further disruption when exams resume next week.
“We apologise for the disruption during Wednesday’s Level 2 English exam. We recognise this was stressful for students, whānau and schools,” says NZQA Chief Executive, Christian Hawkesby.
“To make sure students are treated fairly, we will be reviewing marking decisions to make sure appropriate flexibility can be applied, and schools can continue providing derived grades for students where they have evidence of what students know. We will be monitoring this process with schools.”
“We are continuing to work closely with our IT provider and undertaking extensive testing of our systems through the weekend.”
“I have spoken with the provider’s Chief Executive who has also apologised for the issue and assured us that it will not be repeated.”
“All the remaining exams will start with the maximum capacity that the system can provide, and ongoing system monitoring will be in place.”
“Although we are doing everything we can to make sure there will not be further disruptions, we are also working with schools so that all students sitting exams on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday can have access to paper backups.”
“We are making this move out of an abundance of caution – but also mindful that students may be nervous about attempting exams digitally,” Mr Hawkesby says.
NZQA is providing printed paper backups for NCEA Level 1 English, which is the largest exam of the year with around 41,000 digital entries, and will cover the costs to schools of printing papers for other exams.
There are almost 26,000 digital entries across the other 13 exams offered digitally on these three days.
“We are sorry for the disruption and additional strain on students, whānau and schools this incident has caused. We are focused on restoring trust and confidence in our ability to deliver digital assessments,” Christian Hawkesby says.