ETS Selected to Help Establish India’s First National Assessment Regulator, PARAKH

Combining NCERT’s vision and ETS’s expertise to leapfrog Indian assessments and learning

NEW DELHI (February 7, 2023) – ETS, the world’s largest educational assessment organization, announced today that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) selected ETS to support the set-up of India’s first national assessment regulator, PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development).

“NCERT on behalf of Ministry of Education, Govt. of India, is in the process of setting up PARAKH, as mandated by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and is delighted to have ETS as the technical partner in this endeavour,” said Professor Indrani Bhaduri, Professor and Head of the Educational Survey Division, NCERT. “Their understanding of global best practices in curriculum and assessment will be a great asset in standardising these aspects across the various school boards in the country thereby paving the path towards quality, consistency and uniformity in the teaching-learning and assessment practices. We at NCERT are enthused to partner with ETS and deploy their considerable expertise in educational research in learning assessments and intend to capitalize the same for the betterment of all aspects of school education, benefiting the learners, teachers and educational delivery system in this country.”

The PARAKH initiative will set norms, standards and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation for all recognized school boards in India. This will put a heightened focus on building quality assessments to better measure and increase knowledge and skill acquisition across India.

PARAKH’s aims align with India’s NEP 2020 with the new regulator being established as the nation’s premier, official resource for all assessment-related information and expertise. PARAKH’s mandate is to support learning assessment in all forms. ETS brings its decades of expertise in educational measurement across K-12, higher education, languages and workforce as well as in large-scale assessment services to this new initiative.

“ETS is honored to work alongside NCERT in building the future of learning through innovation and quality assessment expertise to measure what matters most as India becomes a powerhouse in global education,” said Amit Sevak, CEO of ETS. “The PARAKH initiative will serve as a global model for how to build world-class assessment and learning systems to deliver high-quality student outcomes, advance education and improve millions of lives.”

ETS’s mission to advance quality and equity in education by providing fair and valid assessments, research, and related services closely aligns with PARAKH’s twin objectives: to monitor the health of the Indian education system and achievement of learning outcomes, and to improve assessment and establish standards. 

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About ETS

We believe in the life-changing power of learning. For the last 75 years, we’ve been driven by a vision of what’s possible when all people can improve their lives through education. It’s why our uncompromising commitment to equity and fairness is behind everything we do. ETS serves learners, educators and government agencies by providing measurement solutions, and conducting research, analysis and policy studies. ETS develops, administers and scores tens of millions of tests annually — including the TOEFL^® and TOEIC^® tests, the GRE^® tests and The Praxis Series^® assessments — in more than 200 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org