National Testing Agency (NTA) has been established as a premier, specialist, autonomous and self-sustained testing organization to conduct entrance examinations for admission/ fellowship in higher educational institutions.
Functions of National Testing Agency
- To identify partner institutions with adequate infrastructure from the existing schools and higher education institutions which would facilitate conduct of online examinations without adversely impacting their academic routine
- To create a question bank for all subjects using the modern techniques
- To establish a strong R&D culture as well as a pool of experts in different aspects of testing
- To help individual colleges and universities in the field of testing and to provide training and advisory services to the institutions in India.
- To provide quality testing services to the academic institutions in India.
- To develop a state of the art culture of testing in India by using domestic and international expertise. To collaborate with international organizations like ETS to achieve the same.
- To undertake any other examination that is entrusted to it by the Ministries.
- To undertake the reforms and training of school boards as well as other bodies where the testing standards should be comparable with the entrance examinations.
Advantages of NTA
- NTA will have a team of education administrators, experts, researchers and assessment developers who believe that scientifically designed assessments can improve teaching learning processes. It will improve equity and will ensure that merit and not the means prevail in selections.
- NTA will create a pool of highly professional subject matter experts who will be trained by the psychometricians and statisticians. These subject matter experts will write items for NTA and using software/ artificial intelligence, the NTA will create tests.
- In future, NTA will also undertake other tests to measure specific population’s content, knowledge and skills.
- NTA will have a huge repository of data of student performance, with various other demographic parameters across subject areas. NTA will analyse this data to inform the policymakers about the corrective measures required for improving teaching and learning.
Source: NTA website
