Ontario’s Grade 10 literacy test — which suffered a major cyberattack during an online trial this fall — will be offered on paper only this spring as the agency that runs it tries to ensure any move to digital is secure.

Despite earlier assurances from the Education Quality and Accountability Office that it planned to move ahead with online testing this coming March, with a hard copy available as a back-up, the chaos caused by the hacking incident caused it to reconsider, said interim CEO Richard Jones.

“We really just decided that it was far too risky to do that,” he said. “…One of the things that we learned through the trial was how upsetting it was for students, and obviously students were very, very anxious, frustrated.”

If students took the test online and then had to revert to a paper test, “it’s not necessarily as clean as all that,” he added. “Students would potentially be upset, they are going to be anxious, and then are they really going to be able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills, basically their true performance, in that kind of a situation? We just determined that it was not worth the risk for students, and just not fair to them.”

The “malicious and sustained” cyberattack in October prompted the EQAO to call police, and forced the agency to shut down the test just hours after it began, affecting almost 150,000 students taking part in a $250,000 pilot project.

The EQAO now has IT experts and a forensic firm investigating what went wrong, and expects a report soon that will include recommendations about improving online security.

But Jones told the Star the agency may never be able to determine the magnitude of the DDoS, or “distributed denial of service” attack, which flooded the website with junk traffic. At one point, 99 per cent of traffic was not from schools or boards, but rather IP addresses from around the world.

Still, some 18,000 teens managed to finish the test or most of it, and the agency says if they passed, they won’t have to write it again. Students will be notified mid-January.

The EQAO says it can’t predict when it will go digital.

The “pause” in moving online also gives the EQAO a chance to hear from parents, students and teachers in the coming months about the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test, which students must pass in order to graduate, added Jones.

Education Minister Mitzie Hunter called the online testing delay “the least disruptive for students, teachers and parents…

“The malicious attack on the system this past fall took a tremendous toll on the thousands of students, parents and educators who prepared for the (literacy test). Before (it) moves back online, I will need to be assured by EQAO that the necessary technical issues, security concerns and system stability requirements have been addressed.”

Earlier this week, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association released a survey showing that almost two-thirds of its members support changing the EQAO tests — which are given to students in Grade 3, 6, 9 and 10 in reading, writing and/or math — with 12 per cent wanting them eliminated entirely.

The surprising results — normally it is teacher unions calling for such moves — saw boards raising concerns about culturally biased questions, lack of technology use as well as calling for randomized, instead of the current full-scale, testing.

“What it comes down to, is we want to talk about what we can do to make it better,” said Cathy Abraham, a vice-president with the association.

She said boards have complained about questions that might work for students in Toronto on subways don’t for students in the north, like questions on moose hunting don’t fit the experiences of students who live in the downtown core.

“We want to encourage the ministry to look at this — it’s time,” she added.

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She is pleased the EQAO plans to consult with students and boards about the literacy test, because “it’s something I’ve started to say more and more — don’t have a conversation about us, without us.”

Jones said the EQAO will look at all the recommendations from the public school boards.