Less than 24 hours away from the beginning of the 2008 New Zealand Scholarship and NCEA exam season, 6335 Otago pupils are doing last-minute cramming.
Scholarship exams begin tomorrow, with chemistry, classics and Te Reo Maori, and NCEA exams beginning on Monday morning with level 1 biology, level 2 Te Reo Maori and level 3 biology.
Otago candidates are among more than 139,000 senior secondary school pupils nationwide sitting NCEA exams this year, filling out nearly 1.9 million answer booklets in about 120 exam sessions.
This year's largest exam sessions will be level 1 English, with 46,755 candidates, and level 1 mathematics with 44,556 candidates.
The smallest is Scholarship Latin, with 19 candidates.
New Zealand Qualifications Authority deputy chief executive, qualifications, Bali Haque said the authority planned to publish exam papers online by the end of the following business day after each exam.
Candidates would receive their NCEA results by mid-January and NZ Scholarship results in mid-February.
Marked NCEA exam papers will be returned to candidates from the end of January. NZQA was working hard to ensure another successful examination season, he said.
"We wish all candidates the very best."
Exams will finish on December 3.
