Auckland internet outage disrupts NCEA exams for more than 1000 students

NCEA exams were under way at some schools when the internet outage occurred. File photo / Brett Phibbs

NCEA exams for more than a thousand students have been disrupted by an internet outage, with one exclusive Auckland private school planning to bulk apply for derived grades.

The hour-long Spark outage occurred just before 11am yesterday and affected multiple corporate customers, including Crown-owned school internet provider Network for Learning (N4L).

Forty schools in our biggest city were caught up in the outage, including nine where NCEA exams were taking place, N4L chief executive Larrie Moore said.

Diocesan School for Girls principal Heather McRae told the Herald students were part-way through the NCEA level 2 English exam when the internet connection cut off.

Seventeen classes were also affected.

She wasn’t sure how many students were in the English exam, but the school has a Year 12 roll of 173, McRae said.

School staff switched to another provider and were able to resume the exam after around 15 or 20 minutes, she said.

Some extra time was also added at the end of the exam, although this was limited as some students had back-to-back exams scheduled yesterday.

“It [was] a bit disconcerting for the students affected.”

The school would make a bulk application for a derived grade for all those in the exam, McRae said.

Diocesan School for Girls principal Heather McRae said some students at the independent school in Auckland were among those affected by an internet outage during NCEA exams. Photo / Supplied

Derived grades are those awarded to students who can’t attend an exam or external assessment, or whose performance is impaired by circumstances out of their control, according to the NZQA website.

They are evidence-based grades based on “authentic, standard-specific evidence … such as a student’s performance in a formal practice assessment at school”, the qualifications authority’s website said.

“If we approve your application for a derived grade but you still take the exam, you will receive the higher of the two grades.”

Approximately 1100 students sitting exams were affected by yesterday’s outage, said Moore.

“N4L understands this situation was stressful for the schools and students impacted … during the incident, Spark worked closely with N4L and NZQA to ensure our approach was aligned, and we could respond to the issue and get schools back online as soon as possible.”

Spark had told N4L it didn’t expect there would be further impacts to schools as a result of the fault, he said.

A Spark spokewoman said the fault was caused by an issue with a core network node affecting network connections for some corporate customers in Auckland.

It was fixed after about an hour, she said.

“Unfortunately, [those affected] included some students who were sitting NCEA exams.

“We sincerely apologise to these students and any other customers who were impacted by the disruption … we have taken steps to add heightened support to this network node to ensure this fault doesn’t happen again.”

The Ministry of Education referred comment to NZQA and N4L.

Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.