National Testing Service

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National Testing Service (NTS) is an NGO in Pakistan that conducts academic performance evaluation tests. It is similar to Educational Testing Service (ETS). NTS offers two main types of tests, the National Admission Test (NAT) and the Graduate Assessment Test (GAT). NAT is aimed at pre graduate students seeking admission in colleges / unversities. GAT is aimed at graduates, seeking admission in higher education. NTS exams are also used to determine qualifications of students seeking advanced study abroad.^[1]

NTS is a Member of the International Association for Educational Assessment, USA (IAEA). It is recognized by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC). The NTS was developed to ensure quality educational standards in Pakistan and to "provide a national scale for comparative grading between institutes",^[2] consolidating examination boards under one administrating body.^[3] According to Shahid Siddiqui, director of The Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics, tests implemented prior to the development of the NTS were criticized as not accommodating socio-cultural differences, resulting in a need for "an indigenous testing service that should design and develop testing materials within an indigenous context".^[4] Prominent Pakistani institutions like Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) and Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering (CASE) have made it compulsory for students seeking admission to have cleared tests conducted by NTS^[5]^[6].

[edit] History

Controversy erupted in 2007 following the mandating of NTS testing, first announced by Khalid Maqbool, Governor of Punjab, with regards to admission to universities and later set aside by the government unless the laws regarding university admission were amended.^[7] ^[8] Criticism included allegations that the services were inconvenient to access and prohibitively expensive to economically challenged students.^[8]^[9] Maqbool called for input from the vice-chancellors of Punjab's public universities on 4 June.^[10] That year, each university department was permitted to set its own entrance requirements, with six of 64 departments at Punjab University electing to utilize tests from NTS.^[11]^[12] In October of 2007, the vice-chancellor of Punjab University, Muhammad Arif Butt, endorsed the use of NTS testing in all departments of the university.^[13] NTS director Haroonul Rasheed said that no tuition centres are associated with the service and NTS exams will not be out of course. ^[14]