The North Rhine-Westphalian school minister Dorothee Feller (CDU) has given the cause of the technical breakdown in the high school exams in North Rhine-Westphalia: According to this, the IT systems of the commissioned service provider for the simultaneous download of the examination documents were “not optimal” dimensioned. In May 2022, when the download server was updated, settings were made that meant that the system was no longer able to cope with a high number of simultaneous accesses to the central high school, Feller said on Friday at a special meeting of the school committee of the Düsseldorf state parliament. Feller emphasized that something like this shouldn’t be allowed to happen again.
Overloaded servers – due to incorrect settings
Due to the breakdown, the Ministry of Education had postponed the examinations in six predominantly scientific and technical subjects – biology, chemistry, nutrition, computer science, physics and technology (basic course and advanced course) – from Wednesday to Friday. Around 30,000 of the 72,000 high school graduates nationwide were affected. Minister Feller once again apologized to all those affected for the anger, disappointment and excitement involved.
A “Plan B” to have the exam tasks downloaded from the school ministry’s server also failed on Tuesday evening, said Feller. While the tasks were being uploaded, an email with the access code was already sent to the schools. At the same time, numerous schools started downloading while the exam tasks were still being uploaded to the server. The ministry’s server couldn’t cope with that. The exams should have been postponed. “It was a bitter moment for all of us and a bitter disappointment,” said Feller.
(tiw)
