NZQA says it stopped taking logins to online exams on Friday morning, including NCEA Level 1 English, after the system began to slow.

More than 20,000 students had been expected to log in on Friday morning, NZQA deputy chief executive, assessment Jann Marshall says in a statement.

“Extensive testing by our technology vendor gave NZQA confidence that this level of activity could be supported.

“The system began to slow after more than 18,000 students had logged in, and a decision was made to stop further logins to guarantee the experience of these students.”

Students who had not been able to log in were directed to a personalised paper version of the exam, which is available for every student.

“NZQA apologies for the disruption caused for some students and will continue to work with its technology vendor as they scale up the capacity of the system,” says Jann.

Secretary Principals’ Association president Vaughan Couillault says NZQA has some questions to answer about the login problem, which has been disruptive, and “not ideal by any stretch of the imagination”.

Even though NZQA would have sent out emails immediately it stopped further logins, those emails didn’t go to the students sitting exams, and it could have taken several minutes for them to be told.

During that time they would have kept trying to log in, and would not have been able to.

Running of the exams is contracted out to exam centre managers, who have a range of ways to mitigate issues that crop up, says Vaughn.

“They have backup paper copies... Every student at my school, for example, who had login issues just had to do it on paper.”

Enough paper exam copies were available. If there hadn’t been, extra copies could have been duplicated.

Also, most students were doing one or two standards, each of which was designed to be done in less than 60 minutes. With three hours available to sit the exam, there was time available to sort the issue out.

A NZQA spokesperson says the number of NCEA exams being sat online on Friday was a new record, with exams being made increasingly available online in recent years.

Schools could opt for digital or paper versions, with a paper version also being available for every student who intended to sit an exam online, they say.

The long-term goal was to have a digital-first approach, but that point had not been reached yet.

-Michael Daly/Stuff.