NAPLAN chaos as website crashes on first day of testing

NAPLAN exams have now resumed around the country after a morning of chaos caused by an online outage that marred the first day of the annual national schools testing program.

There was panic among teachers and principals at schools across Australia after they had to pause NAPLAN testing on Wednesday morning because they could not access the online resources they needed to run the tests.

The Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority confirmed that a widespread issue had prevented students from logging on and asked schools to pause assessments until the issue had been resolved.

“This issue is being urgently investigated by our technology provider, Education Services Australia, who run the platform,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“Schools have been advised to pause testing while this is being investigated.”

The disruption hit students in years 5, 7 and 9, more than a million of whom were due to begin their writing tests on Wednesday. Year 3 students, who take this test using pen and paper, were not affected by the problems with the ACARA platform.

Authorities were unable to say how many schools and students were affected by the glitch, but educators from across Australia have contacted this masthead telling of the confusion, distress and panic at their schools on Wednesday morning.

An ACARA spokesperson said that as of 11.30am, the online problems had been fixed and that testing in affected schools had resumed.

“We apologise for the disruption to students and schools, and thank them for their patience. The issue has now been resolved, and schools have been informed they can resume testing,” the spokesperson said.

“We continue to monitor the platform to ensure students are able to complete their assessments without further issues.”

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority chief executive Andrew Smith told ABC Radio Melbourne on Wednesday morning that although the number of affected schools was unknown, it was significant enough to cause concern to the state and national testing authorities.

Smith said the delays for some schools in testing their students would not hand an unfair advantage to the schools that had no issues.

“The writing test is held over the first two days, so the prompts that you get for writing are protected in such a way that there’s no advantage for taking the test earlier than others,” Smith said.

One secondary principal said that the outage at his school started just five minutes into the year 9 writing task. He said students were logged out one by one, causing confusion and resulting in the test being abandoned.

“We were advised to pause and postpone just before 10am and will try again tomorrow,” he said.

“Logistically it’s a nightmare, particularly for secondary schools. Classes had to be covered, we repurposed rooms, set up laptops, and coordinated the tests.”

He said hundreds of year 9 students due to sit the test would return to scheduled classes for the rest of the day.

However, the outage had left staff feeling disappointed and frustrated.

“There’s a high expectation on student participation,” he said.

Another primary school principal, who asked not to be named in order to speak freely, said there was a panic among educators unsure if it was just their school or across the network.

“The Year 3 test is still done the old-fashioned way, that went smoothly without a hitch,” he said.

But with students at some schools having access to the test for 10 minutes before it dropped out, questions are being raised over whether some now have an unfair advantage if the test prompt isn’t changed.

“It raises issues because the writing test is an unseen prompt. Some kids if they have seen the prompt … have 24 hours to familiarise themselves with it and plan it out,” he said.

Though the principal said his school does not put pressure on their students’ performance, the assessment is significant in terms of the MySchool website and the Department of Education.

“That’s the first point on which we are judged on, what percentage of our students are strong or exceeding. The department looks at us and makes judgments on how good we are. They use the NAPLAN data, it’s important data,” he said.

“That explains the level of stress. If your kids do badly on this test because our server falls over, we have to spend the next two years explaining why our students can’t write.”

A VCAA spokesperson said they had been alerted that schools were having difficulty accessing the NAPLAN platform and was working to support them.

“We immediately notified ACARA, who, along with ESA [Education Services Australia], are investigating the issue. Any schools unable to complete testing today will be able to do testing tomorrow,” he said.

More to come.

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