‘A nightmare’: NAPLAN chaos as website crashes on first day of testing

The chief of the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) has apologised “unreservedly” for the technological failure that caused chaos across the country and left students unable to log on for the first day of annual NAPLAN testing.

Educators told this masthead of the “nightmare” on Wednesday morning after students in years 5, 7 and 9 were told to pause their writing tests due to issues accessing online resources.

As the federal opposition demanded answers, the government conceded that the day’s disruptions were “not good enough”.

More than a million primary and secondary students were due to take the online exam, but authorities have still not been able to specify how many children were affected by the tech failure.

Another several hundred thousand year 3 students were able to their exams, as planned, using pen and paper.

“I recognise that this caused disruptions in a significant number of schools and for that, we apologise unreservedly,” ACARA chief executive Stephen Gneil said.

Though the online problems had been fixed by 11.30am and testing was able to resume, Gneil said his organisation was still working through what went wrong, and how many schools and children had been affected.

It was also unclear how many schools were able to resume exams once the connection had been restored, and how many would have to reschedule for Thursday.

Gneil, a former chief executive of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, said ACARA’s technology provider, Education Services Australia, would “conduct a full and thorough technical investigation so we can understand the cause of the issue.”

In 2023, Education Services Australia and ASX-listed Janison Education Group entered a $24 million agreement to provide the online platform behind NAPLAN.

Both organisations directed questions to ACARA when this masthead contacted them on Wednesday.

One secondary principal told The Age 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 paused.

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

The principal said 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 so they could 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 high school students at some schools having access to the test for 10 minutes before access dropped out, questions were raised over whether some students 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 Education Department.

“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.”

Federal shadow education minister Julian Leeser said he had written to Education Minster Jason Clare with 16 questions about the nationwide glitch.

“My first thoughts are with the families and the children who are dealing with this failure,” Leeser said.

Clare said that he had been in communication with Gneil.

“The bottom line here is that this is not good enough,” the minister said.

“It’s a disruption to teachers, students and also parents. I’ve made that very clear to the head of ACARA.”

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