NCEA exam results release date announced by NZQA

Exam results will be available from January 17. Photo / file

NCEA students will be able to check their results online from Tuesday, January 17, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority NZQA said today.

But Scholarship students will have three nerve-racking weeks longer to wait - those results won't be available until Wednesday, February 8.

NZQA has released advice on its website for students, on what to do to ensure they can access their results on the day.

Pupils are advised to log into the NZQA's secure Learner Login section before Christmas to make sure they have the correct username and password details to access their results once they become available.

Certificates can be ordered online the day after results are released, and answer booklets will be returned late next month.

Around 146,000 students were expected to sit NCEA exams from November 9 to December 2.

This exam season has been dogged with a number of obstacles and headaches for the exam body.

First there were technical teething problems encountered by students sitting the Level 1 English exam in digital format as part of a pilot programme to move exams online.

A number of pupils had problems logging into the test, while others' computers froze or crashed during the exam.

NZQA later offered all those who sat the exam a derived grade if they felt their performance may have been affected.

Thousands of students were then affected when the magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura quake rocked most of the country, and many pupils spent the night before their exams on high ground after tsunami warnings. Others were evacuated from their homes, and schools were closed.

NCEA results will be available online from Tuesday 17 Jan 2017. New Zealand Scholarship results will be released Wednesday 8 Feb 2017.

— NZQA (@NZQAofficial) December 2, 2016

The derived-grade process was offered to all those who may have been affected by the earthquakes, after NZQA made the decision to go ahead with exams on the morning of the quake.

Confusion reigned on the morning of November 14, and NQA cancelled Scholarship exams minutes before 9am. However, the short notice meant a number of pupils sat the exam anyway, or were pulled out halfway through when schools realised it had been postponed.

The exam body re-arranged a new time for the exam, and had to write a new paper, because pupils had already seen the questions. Meanwhile, those who sat the test were reassured they would not have to sit another one.

The last week of the exam season was marred by a raft of mistakes in maths exams - every level from Level 1 to Scholarship was affected by an error.

NZQA is investigating a mistake in the Level 3 Statistics paper, which rendered a question impossible to answer.

However, it said the other mistakes would not have affected a student's ability to answer the questions.

A number of complaints have been laid with the authority over the mistakes.

The botch-ups came hot on the heels of a major controversy this year over a Level 1 algebra exam, which many said was too difficult and left some students in tears.