High school students anxiously awaiting their NCEA results logged online this morning to discover their marks only to find they were removed from the system moments later.
Those who saw their results were left wondering whether they were accurate or if official results would be different.
The New Zealand Qualification Authority's (NZQA) twitter account was flooded with messages from concerned students asking what happened.
One asked: "Could the results I saw this morning be wrong? At all?"
Another said: "Hey I got my results at 6am this morning and then the website crashed, doesn't this mean that those results I saw are not real?"
NZQA deputy chief executive Richard Thornton said staff were running some tests between 6.25am and 6.30am, which allowed some students to view their results. Those results were correct and would not change, he said.
"As part of our normal processes NZQA runs NCEA results early morning to undertake final checks before we announce that results are available. Some students were online during this five minute period," Thornton said.
"Our message to students is that they should wait until NZQA announces that final results have been released and are available on NZQA's website. To avoid uncertainty learners [students] will not be able to login until results are released."
Official results would be released some time this week.
The father of a year 11 student contacted Stuff.co.nz to say his daughter had constantly been checking the NZQA website for her results and was ecstatic when she logged on and viewed her marks this morning.
That was about 6.30am but NZQA posted a message on its site at 7am saying the student login was temporarily unavailable "due to final NCEA results testing".
"It's a bitter sweet moment," the father, who did not want to be named, said.
"She was quite excited and now she's gutted."
His daughter had already earned enough credits to pass prior to her exams but was a high-achieving student and had worked "aggressively" to achieve excellence in all her subjects. The results she viewed this morning said she had.
"I am just hoping that the results I saw this morning are the results that will get released because I don't want them to change," she said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8175235/Exam-results-Now-you-see-them-now-you-don-t
