Schools across Australia have been forced to pause NAPLAN testing after being hit with technical issues on day one of planned assessments.
Students logging on to do their first assessment on Wednesday morning struggled to connect to the online platform, with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority saying it was aware of “slow response times and delays”.
The Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority confirmed they were aware of a widespread issue affecting students from being able to log on and had 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 has hit hundreds of thousands of students in years 5, 7 and 9 who 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 have been affected by the glitch.
ACARA 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 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.
Bridie Smith is an education reporter at The Age. A former desk editor, she has also reported on science and consumer affairs.Connect via X, Facebook or email.
Nicole Precel is an education reporter at The Age. She was previously an audio video producer. She is also a documentary maker. Get in touch at nicole.precel@theage.com.auConnect via X, Facebook or email.
Jackson Graham is an education reporter at The Age. He was previously an explainer reporter.Connect via email.