The Qualifications Authority is pushing ahead with plans to have nearly all school subjects assessed online in the next five years.

LISTEN ABOVE: Reece Goldsmith speaks to Mike Hosking on the Mike Hosking Breakfast about NCEA exams going digital.

It could signal the end of exams as we know them, with more than a hundred schools gearing up for an online trial of an NCEA maths assessment next month.

A paper version of the test is also being carried out as a backup.

MacKenzie College in south Canterbury is taking part. Principal Reece Goldsmith admits while it's been an adjustment for some teachers, students are more happy than to "go digital". He sees it going a step further with the eventual demise of end-of-year exams as we know them.

"I cannot see a day where 300 level one students [are] in a hall on computers doing an assessment. I think part of that shift will be smaller groups at various times when the student is ready."

He has reassured there are safeguards in place to catch cheating.

"We have the ability to track students and if they were to, for example, go off on to another site to find an answer. But also from NZQA's side my understanding is that they will have a flagging mechanism as well." 

But Mr Goldsmith admits they have had to think of reactions to problems they've never had to think about before "for example, for this test you can't use a calculator and of course these students are going to be logging on to the internet so we've got to make sure that doesn't happen."