'We’ll look at newer, innovative assessments': ETS CEO on collaboration with NCERT's PARAKH

NEW DELHI: The National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) has selected ETS, a US-based global testing service, as its partner for setting up PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), the top body for framing norms and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation across school boards in India. It was a key recommendation in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. ETS is best known for conducting the English proficiency test, TOEFL, and Graduate Record Examinations (GRE).

Amit Sevak, president and global CEO of ETS, spoke to Careers360 about the roadmap that ETS and NCERT are drawing. Edited excerpts below.

Q. Why was ETS interested in PARAKH?

A. PARAKH was interesting because it aligns with our mission. Our mission is to add quality and equity in education through assessments, research and other services. The initiative was to set new guidelines, new standards for how assessments can be done. The goal of PARAKH is to really monitor the health of the educational delivery of the K12 schools in India.

Q. In what capacity will ETS be involved in PARAKH?

A. We are essentially a partner to NCERT and so, will be designing roadmaps and working closely with NCERT on the delivery of those initiatives. We’re not just here just for policy development, but also to support the deployment and our role starts immediately.

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We’re going to be making some investments in India to further support this initiative. We’ll be bringing people from other countries – some of our international experts, as well as some of our team here in India – to sit together and discuss.

Q. Will there be academic inputs? Technical inputs? Technology?

A. All of those are going to be components of it. The very first step is to analyse the current context to better understand what metrics and measurements currently exist, what best practices or norms can be set going forward, and then to start the process of articulating those norms for the Indian context.

Q. In what capacity will ETS be involved with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and other state boards?

A. Our mandate is to focus on the federal level. At the beginning, because this is a national initiative, we’re going to be primarily focusing on defining the scope of the arrangements at the federal level.

We will work closely with the NCERT to get inputs from the 36 different states. There are a total of 62 school boards in India. We’re going to need to work not only across the government, but also up and down at the federal level, at the state level, at the school board level and then, the district level.

Q. So, it will be more focused on the overall framework at the centre rather than on the specific state-level assessments.

A. In the beginning, yes. We’ll be getting inputs from the states but it’ll be to design the overall framework. The central government has been announcing a new architecture for the school education system itself. That is the 5 + 3 + 3 + 4 mechanism.

Right now, we’re already holding discussions on the foundation years, the initial five years of study. We’re gathering inputs from the states because we want the assessment framework to align closely with the different steps that the government is planning on introducing.

Q. Will there be a review of the functioning of Indian boards? Would that be the first step?

A. We see a lot of demand from governments to provide guidelines and frameworks to help schools and states better measure progress in literacy and numeracy in whichever language is being taught.

We can help, through better assessments and better testing, to strengthen people’s understanding, and acquisition of vocabulary, sentence structure or the four aspects of literacy – reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Historically, a lot of focus has been on long-form standardised tests, sometimes called summative tests. We believe there is an opportunity to develop much shorter assessments, more integrated into the curriculum and easier for teachers to administer.

So, we’re going to be looking at not only the traditional way of doing assessments in India but also some of the newer and innovative ways seen in different parts of the world.

Q. Any examples of the innovations that you are talking about?

A. Historically, a lot of assessments focus on cognitive skills and knowledge. Can you solve problems? Can you analyse a situation? Can you interpret? These are assessments of the rational part of the brain. But new forms of assessments are able to measure the non-cognitive areas that focus more on emotional management.

There are also soft skills like how you communicate, collaborate, demonstrate creativity. Those kinds of skills are going to be increasingly important. We want to start measuring and sharing those kinds of tests.

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We at ETS are about to formalise a partnership that will introduce what we call the “ABCs of assessment” – affective, behavioural and cognitive. So most people think of cognitive assessments – the kind you see in schools, the standardised tests. Affective tests have the elements mentioned before – communication, ability to analyse an emotional situation. And behavioural assessments look at how you behave.

Some examples would be a test or assessment that asks you to work with somebody else and then it measures not only your individual contribution but the extent of collaboration. It can also be an assessment in which you have to take a video on your phone, since you are communicating something through that.

Q. The NAS (National Assessment Survey) is coming up. Will ETS be involved?

A. Our mandate right now is focussed on PARAKH, that is an institution-building and agenda-building framework. That framework and the teams involved in that framework will be engaged in NAS 2024 and beyond. So, it’ll be indirectly involved in support of NAS.

Q. Are you working with a certain time frame in mind? Are there immediate short-term and long-term priorities?

A. When PARAKH is fully operationalised I think this is going to be a beacon for the world.

The dedicated group will be one place for best practices of assessments, on using technologies such as artificial intelligence or Chat GPT, on training teachers on assessments.

It will look at capacity building, training and new methodologies, project-based learning group assessments and the application of AI assessment. All of these aspects are going to be really critical to address.

In the short term, we are focussing on the simple things, a roadmap, getting the team set up and having fortnightly reviews. In the mid term and long term we are going to be focusing on some of these more ambitious goals.

Q. Will ETS be charging any consultation fee?

A. The contract is still being drawn up based on our proposal and so, the amount remains uncertain.

Q. Has ETS ever worked with a country with such diversity and in such a capacity before?

A. ETS has worked in many countries. We work with OECD countries. We work across the United States of America. We certainly work in Asia through many programmes that we have in China, Japan and South Korea and in other Asian countries. We also work in the Middle East.

Many of these countries have quite a bit of diversity. So, we have worked in pretty diverse contexts. We have been able to help organisations or governments figure out how to deliver assessments that can still be reliable and valid in a way that their assessments cut across all of that diversity.

Since India is on a whole other scale, with its large population, with a lot of linguistic diversity, with the social economic diversity, with a lot of cultural nuance, it’ll be an interesting opportunity.

Q. Both TOEFL and GRE have many takers in India. This has also brought to light many cases of exam fraud. Is ETS doing anything to tackle this?

A. We recently hired a chief security officer, who is focusing globally, including here in India, on our test security because we take test security very seriously.

Secondly, we have something called the Office of Test Integrity. This is a dedicated organisation that focuses on ensuring that all of our tests are secure.

In addition, we are going to continue monitoring through the use of new technologies. So we have something that looks at the gaze, the way people’s eyes are moving, or at people’s hands for different actions to catch any wrongdoings.

Q. Why set up an Indian business advisory council?

A. The goal of our Indian business advisory council is to help engage with organisations that are in business education. We think this council will help raise the profile of some of the ETS offerings in business education

One of our most important offerings is the GRE which is now used globally by business schools for admission purposes. Today in India, 99 programmes accept the GRE. In the past, the GRE was a test that people took to go abroad. But today, you can take the GRE for business programmes in India.

Our mandate right now is focussed on PARAKH, that is an institution-building and agenda-building framework. That framework and the teams involved in that framework will be engaged in NAS 2024 and beyond

The very first step is to analyse the current context to better understand what metrics and measurements currently exist, what best practices or norms can be set going forward, and then to start the process of articulating those norms for the Indian context