PARAKH, India's first national assessment regulator, has been established through a partnership between the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) and the Educational Testing Service (ETS), known for conducting TOEFL and GRE tests. PARAKH, which stands for Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development, will create norms, standards, and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation across all recognized school boards in India.

Further, the regulator will set up assessment guidelines for all boards to help remove disparities in scores of students enrolled with different state boards, a reform outlined in the new National Education Policy (NEP), 2022. Speaking about this, the Professor and Head of the Educational Survey Division, NCERT Indrani Bhaduri said, "NCERT on behalf of the Ministry of Education, 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."

"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," she added.

Further, speaking about their partnership with ETS, she said, "We at NCERT are enthused to partner with ETS and deploy their considerable expertise in educational research in learning assessments and intend to capitalise the same for the betterment of all aspects of school education, benefiting the learners, teachers and educational delivery system in this country."

What is ETS?
ETS develops, administers and scores tens of millions of tests annually - including the TOEFL, TOEIC, GRE tests and The Praxis Series assessments - in more than 200 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. Sharing his views on PARAKH, CEO of ETS Amit Sevak said, "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."

"We look forward to working with 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," he added, as stated in a report by PTI.