NCEA site brought to near-standstill after results released

New Zealand: The long wait for NCEA exam results came to end for thousands of students today despite a flood of traffic bringing the website to a near-standstill.

NZQA said more than 143,000 exam-sitting students and some 20,000 internally assessed students would be able to access their results online from 8am.

But high demand brought the site to a near-standstill for many users this morning, with NZQA saying its servers were at full capacity.

An NZQA spokeswoman said national student achievement statistics would not be published until March.

Statistics released last year show achievement rates were generally on the rise in the five years to 2011.

The achievement rate at NCEA Level 1 increased from 73 per cent in 2007 to 77 per cent in 2011. The Level 2 achievement rate increased from 77 per cent to 82 per cent, and the Level 3 rate increased from 72 per cent to 75 per cent.

The achievement rate for University Entrance, which has different criteria to Level 3, remained roughly the same, at 67 per cent in 2011 compared with 68 per cent in 2007.

Girls did better overall, with 80 per cent achieving NCEA Level 3 in 2011 compared with 71 per cent of boys.

New Zealand European students had the highest achievement rate, at 81 per cent, followed by Asian students at 78 per cent, Maori students at 65 per cent and Pasifika students at 55 per cent.

Higher decile schools performed better than lower decile schools.

- nzherald.co.nz