School boards across states to have similar sets of questions soon: Report

Soon, school boards across the country may ask "similar type of questions" to bring uniformity in the examination process, a report in The Indian Express (IE) said. The Educational Testing Services (ETS) is collaborating with the NCERT to set up a regulator to remove "disparities" from the exams. 

ETS conducts the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) in India. According to Amit Sevak, who was quoted in the IE report, differences in the funding policies in public education, method of recruitment and training and curricular standards cause some boards to outperform others in the National Achievement Survey (NAS). 

But soon, Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (Parakh) will be established as the national assessment regulator. Its primary objective will be "establishing comparative measures and equivalence" among school boards. It will also facilitate collaboration between different boards. NCERT will have administrative control over the organisation. 

Parakh was first proposed in the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. The next round of NAS, to be conducted in 2024, will be conducted by Parakh.

The NAS will also be reviewed later to match the ground realities. 

"There will be a look at the state-by-state level...Perhaps it's representative of reality, or perhaps there are some nuances and how the survey is done in future that we need to look at," Sevak told IE.