Case Study: NZQA moves national exams online with RM Education

How NZQA moved their national exams online and created a platform for innovation in assessment

NZQA partnered with RM Education to modernise New Zealand’s national NCEA exams, moving away from paper-based assessments that no longer reflected students’ digital learning environment. The challenge was to create a more flexible, resilient, bilingual online assessment system that schools and students could adopt when ready, while managing high public scrutiny and technical complexity.

RM Education implemented a staged digital assessment platform using RM Assessor3 and RM Assessment Master, enabling NZQA to trial, launch, and scale online exams across schools. The results were strong: in 2019, about 14,400 students from 197 schools sat digital exams in 14 subjects, and by 2020 NZQA delivered 58 digital exam sessions across 21 subjects and three levels, representing about two thirds of NCEA exams. Student feedback remained highly positive, with 95% preferring digital exams and 97% rating the experience positively.

NZQA

Andrea Gray

Deputy Chief Executive