Level-playing field: Regulator looks at similar exams for all education boards

Established in 1947, the ETS is internationally recognised for conducting TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and GRE (Graduate Record Examination).

In India, differences in many areas — funding policies governing the school education sector, curricular standards, the way teachers are recruited and are trained, among others — cause the imbalance leading to students of some state education boards outperforming others in the National Achievement Survey (NAS), which assesses learning outcomes, Sevak told The Indian Express.

The primary objective of the national assessment regulator — PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) — will be “establishing comparative measures and equivalence” among school boards and promoting collaboration among them, according to the NCERT, which will have administrative control over the organisation.

On how equivalence, once established, will play out across education boards during exams, particularly in Maths and Science subjects, Sevak said, “I think there will be similar types of questions. It will be challenging to do the same exact question because of the distribution mechanism, since they will happen at different times. So, for data protection and for integrity of the test, what we typically do is validate a question type, and then test it across different samples before we offer it.”

The goal is to provide relevant, reliable and valid assessments “that can be statistically representative across the board”, Sevak said.

For ETS, he said, developing reasonable norms to be applied across boards will be akin to solving a puzzle, given India’s linguistic and cultural diversity. PARAKH will also review past rounds of the NAS to see whether its results are representative of the real situation on the ground or changes are required, he said. The next round of NAS, to be held in 2024, will be conducted by PARAKH.

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On the perception that NAS may not necessarily reflect the ground reality, Sevak said he is aware of it and there will be a review. “There will be a look at the state-by-state level…. Perhaps it’s representative of reality, or perhaps there’s some nuances and how the survey is done in future that we need to look at,” he said.