Thousands of secondary school students had a stressful start to their NCEA exams on 12 November 2026, when a computer fault hit online exams around the country.
The problem affected digital exams, including Level 2 English. Some students lost their work, and others couldn’t log on.
The exams started at 9.30am and the fault was fixed by 10.35am, about an hour later. Some students had to switch to writing on paper instead.
NZQA, the organisation that runs NCEA, said its system had problems when it was passing students’ answers on to be marked.
Chris Abercrombie, president of the secondary teachers’ union PPTA, said teachers faced “utter chaos”. He said some schools had to photocopy piles of paper exams, and some sent students home.
NZQA chief executive Christian Hawkesby said sorry to students and their families. He said students will get whichever grade is higher – their real exam result or their practice exam result.
Education Minister Erica Stanford said students had been “badly let down”. She has asked NZQA to come up with a plan to stop it happening again.
Paper copies will be ready at every school for next week’s Level 1 English exam, which is the last big online exam of the year.
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