National Testing Service: Officials fear decline as LHC strips evaluator of powers

KARACHI: The National Testing Service (NTS), the go-to evaluator for university admissions and scholarship tests, has been stripped of its ‘mandatory’ status. The organisation was sponsored and patronised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as a ‘national testing service’ since 2003, despite its position as a private entity. The NTS-based tests were a primary barometer used by universities and degree-awarding institutions for admission purposes. In March, the Lahore High Court (LHC) judged that the NTS is not “an officially approved testing body of the HEC”. “We have no plans to challenge the decision in the apex court,” said the commission’s chairperson, Prof. Dr Mukhtar Ahmed. “The NTS will not hold itself out as an HEC-approved ‘national testing service’. It can, however, continue to operate as a private entity under the law,” he told The Express Tribune. Dr Ahmed says the HEC will propose an amendment in the HEC Ordinance, 2002, in order to provide a proper regulatory statutory framework for establishing and supervising a ‘national testing service’. “Till no proper legislation is put in place, the HEC will not initiate the process of selecting and appointing a national testing body. Our aim is to keep up with the quality assurance standards and in that we might or might not have a role for the NTS in the future,” he said. “The universities are not under any lawful obligation to conduct tests organised by NTS in the matters of admissions or scholarships.” Not all members of the HEC, however, agree with this opinion. The commission’s founding and former chairperson Prof. Dr Attaur Rehman says the driving force behind the establishment of the NTS was to boost a system of meritocracy in the country’s higher education system. “The Lahore High Court’s decision will lead to a significant deterioration of educational standards in the country and it should have been challenged by the HEC in the Supreme Court,” said Dr Rehman. “The commission should not let the higher seats of learning revert to the situation wherein a majority of universities were churning out lacklustre graduates.” Representatives of the universities in their written submission before the court stated that a testing body at a national level is required, but this should not be a private organisation. “The tests conducted by NTS were also made mandatory for the purpose of awarding national and international scholarships,” said Syed Hassan Aftab, additional director for academic affairs at the International Islamic University, Islamabad. “Awarding millions of rupees in scholarships is highly risky in the absence of regulatory framework of monitoring and overseeing the services of NTS.” What lies ahead NTS, introduced in Pakistan 12 years ago, offered recruitment tests not only for private institutions, but also for public institutions including the country’s courts of law, security agencies, provincial disaster management authorities, employees’ old-age benefits institution and educational institutions. “Just as we were about to be recognised internationally as a testing and assessment organisation, we have been left in the lurch in our own home,” said Muhammad Imran Khan, the NTS head for Sindh and Balochistan region. The NTS, he said, was established under direct instructions of the HEC former chairperson, Dr Rehman, as a project taken up by the Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) – a public research university under the federal government. “I assume that the matter will be on the HEC’s priority list to find a way out of the current situation,” said Khan. “Otherwise, we can always directly reach out to every university and degree awarding institution to market our products. There is no legal restriction in this context.” However, in the absence of a ‘mandatory status’ for the NTS, it appears unlikely that university administrations will give preference to a private enterprise over their internal assessment mechanisms, said Dr Abdul Wahab, vice chancellor at Muhammad Ali Jinnah University. Published in The Express Tribune, June 23rd, 2014.