'You had one job, NCEA’: A Year 12 student relives this morning’s exam chaos

A high-school student describes the confusion during this morning’s Year 12 English exam, which was affected by a nation-wide computer system outage.

“The online exam started at 9.30am, and we all logged in to the NCEA portal at the same time. We got the access code, and we were in. Everything was normal for about 15 minutes. I was stoked with one of the questions. Life was looking good. All of a sudden my screen got taken over with a message that said something like “we’ve detected a network issue”. Then my screen froze. You couldn’t scroll up or down, so any work that you’d already done, you couldn’t continue with.

Nearly every computer screen in the room had the same issue. About 20 hands went up all at once. Two exam runners went sprinting down the lines, and at one point, one went up the front and said “there’s technical issues!! We know!!” 

People started running down the hallway. Everyone seemed to be involved but nobody knew anything. My school started printing out paper exams. They had to print out hundreds of copies, and then individually distribute them. That came out really staggered, so the first exam standard got handed out, then the next, then the next. We were supposed to finish at 12.30pm, but we got extra time. But the effects on us weren't the extra time, it’s that you’ve had 45 minutes where your brain has been just ticking over and it wasn’t what we were prepared for. 

Everybody was a mess, because nobody knew what was happening. They give you a sheet of green NCEA refill paper to plan your answers on, so people started writing on that, because there was no alternative for a while. There were people in tears. Ironically, one of the pieces we were given to read in the exam was from The Spinoff about writing on paper instead of on a computer. 

At first, they thought it was just our school. I didn’t find out that the problem was across New Zealand until I got out of my exam. The vibe was tense as hell. Level 2 English is compulsory, it’s not one you can skip, and everyone in Year 12 is taking it. You had one job, NCEA. This system is out of my control, and a derived grade doesn’t make up for all the hours of study we put in. These exams are such a big deal in our year and we worry about them for months. It’s this big, scary thing. We’ve been studying, we’ve done all we can, and it’s been ripped away in a few minutes. 

As told to The Spinoff.