ETS Europe is the

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

an arm of

Educational Testing Service Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address. ETS develops var ...

, an American company, involved in scholastic assessment in Europe.

History

It is headquartered in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, pro ...

in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. ETS employs about 2,700 individuals, including 240 with

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

s and an additional 350 others with "higher degrees." Work that ETS does that is not associated with its nonprofit educational research mission is conducted by for-profit subsidiaries, such as

Prometric Prometric, also known as Prometric Testing, is a U.S.-based company in the test administration industry. Its corporate headquarters is located in Canton (Baltimore, Maryland) in the United States. Prometric operates a test center network composed ...

, which administers test by computer for licensing and certification in the professional world, and ''ETS Global BV'', which contains much of the international operations of the company.

Activities

About 25% of the work carried out by ETS is contracted by the private,

not-for-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

firm, the

College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs a ...

. The most popular of the College Board's tests is the

SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...

, taken by more than 3 million students annually. ETS also develops and administers The College Board's

Advanced Placement Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course ...

program, which is widely used in US high schools for advanced course credit.

Criticism

In England and

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

ETS Europe were contracted to operate the

National Curriculum A national curriculum is a common programme of study in schools that is designed to ensure nationwide uniformity of content and standards in education. It is usually legislated by the national government, possibly in consultation with Federated stat ...

assessments on behalf of the government. ETS took over this role from

Edexcel Edexcel (also known since 2013 as Pearson Edexcel) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational education and examination body formed in 1996 and wholly owned by Pearson plc since 2005. It is the only privately owned examination board ...

in 2008. The first year of their operation was struck by a number of problems, including the late arrival of scripts to examiners, a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

of student entries being unavailable, and countrywide reports of problems with the marking of the papers. The opposition Conservative party has criticised the awarding of the contracts to ETS, and produced a dossier listing previous problems with ETS' service. Their contract with the QCA was terminated in August 2008: ETS is to pay back £19.5m and cancel invoices worth £4.6m. The UK

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...

asked Lord Sutherland to conduct an inquiry into the failure of the 2008 tests. The report included in its main findings: *Primary responsibility for this summer's delivery failure rests with ETS Global BV, which won the public contract to deliver the tests *ETS's capacity to deliver the contract proved to be insufficient. A lack of comprehensive planning and testing by ETS of its systems and processes was a key factor in the delivery failure.

References

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External links

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Educational testing and assessment organizations