‘It was kinda stressful’: Kids forced to restart NAPLAN tests after tech issue

After a morning of technical issues that paused more than a million students’ exams, 10-year-old Alexander Kersten was relieved to finally get his NAPLAN test out of the way.

“I had to redo my entire test, it was kinda stressful, but it was OK,” the Marist Catholic College North Shore year 5 student said.

NAPLAN testing was disrupted by widespread connection issues on Wednesday morning, preventing primary and high school students from starting the online national assessment.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) was forced to temporarily halt exams after a technical issue blocked children from logging onto the online platform to complete their writing assessments.

In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, ACARA CEO Stephen Gniel said the authority became aware of a technical issue with the platform, which is managed by Education Services Australia, at 9.20am. The news was soon after shared with the public on the authority’s Facebook page.

Gniel said the issue was “urgently investigated” by Education Services Australia.

“As per the tried and tested procedures we have in place, schools were advised to pause testing while the issue was investigated,” he said, noting this information was given to state and territory curriculum authorities to pass onto schools at 9.31am.

At 11.30am, an ACARA spokesperson advised testing had resumed and apologised to schools and students for the disruption, thanking them for their patience.

Gniel said Education Services Australia would “conduct a full and thorough technical investigation” to understand the cause of the issue, apologising unreservedly for the disruptions.

“As we have more information, I will ensure we communicate this information to our schools and wider community.”

The announcement left year 5 student Nicholas, also from Marist North Shore, a little disappointed.

“I was wondering if we would even have to do it … I was excited,” he said. “When they said it had been moved to after recess I was a little bit annoyed.”

Classmate Maurice Lynch, 10, said he enjoyed doing the exam online: “It’s more natural,” he said.

Nicholas agreed: “When you are typing your hands don’t hurt as much, which means you can write a lot longer stories.”

The annual NAPLAN assessments began with the writing test on Wednesday. About 1.4 million students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 were scheduled to complete their assessments at more than 9400 schools and campuses across Australia.

While years 5, 7 and 9 complete their writing assessment online, the year 3 exam uses pen and paper, and so was not disrupted by the technology issues. All other NAPLAN assessments are online.

Speaking at a budget estimates hearing after the technology issues had come to light, NSW Education Minister Prue Car told students and schools “not to panic”, acknowledging “something has gone very wrong” with the platform responsible for hosting the exam.

“There is a window of opportunity to do the NAPLAN testing until Monday, the 23rd of March,” she said.

“This is a nationwide problem in relation to some technical difficulties with the Commonwealth platform … obviously something has gone very wrong there … that’s down.”

NAPLAN began trialling online exams in 2018 before moving the tests online in 2022. The move faced criticism from some academics who said children from low-income groups were disproportionately disadvantaged by online testing.

Asked by the budget estimate hearing’s chair, Greens MLC Abigail Boyd, whether NSW would return to paper tests, NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) chief executive Paul Martin said the online NAPLAN test has been “largely successful”, though there had been two issues last year.

In 2025, children at two Sydney schools resat their NAPLAN writing exams after a technical issue meant they were able to access predictive text and spellcheck. Other students faced delays when the system went offline for 30 minutes.

“I couldn’t possibly comment on going back to pen and paper testing,” said Martin.

“Today’s events indicate that there was clearly another problem.”

An IT worker at a Sydney private school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his employment, said the exam suffered a “complete connectivity issue”, and issues continued after 11.30am, when ACARA said they were resolved.

“They were constantly getting disconnected from the server … they would get back in, but it is super disruptive for the kids,” he said.

Of the 130 students year 9 students he supervised, around “75 per cent” were disconnected at one point, he said.

“I feel for the state school’s students who don’t have the resources we have … ACARA needs to get their act together.”

Australian Education Union federal president Correna Haythorpe said NAPLAN was a “flawed system” that should be scrapped in favour of sample-based testing and teacher-led assessments.

“Today’s outages coupled with the high-stakes nature of the assessment risks increasing student anxiety and will add to teachers’ increasing workloads,” she said.

NSW Teachers Federation Deputy President Natasha Watt described the situation as “very unfortunate”.

“NAPLAN already generates unnecessary and unproductive stress and anxiety for thousands of students and parents across the state,” she said.

“It’s very unfortunate to see that stress aggravated today.”

Earlier this week, Gniel called for an end to the “horrendous misuse” of children’s test scores as entry assessment tools by in-demand schools, asking parents not to put pressure on youngsters to perform.

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