The State Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal for permission to the School Education Department to enter into an agreement with the Educational Testing Services (ETS) for examination and certification of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) to assess English language skills of students from Class III to X in all government schools.
ETS is a non-profit organisation based out of Princeton, United States and primarily conducts three exams — SAT, TOEFL and GRE.
“The certification programme is being introduced to improve the listening and speaking capabilities of the students, even for American and European accents, besides benchmarking our students’ performance at the international level and providing access to students for certification, which is globally accredited and accepted by 11,000 universities and other institutions in over 190 countries and territories,” said Principal Secretary, School Education Praveen Prakash.
Speaking to The Hindu, he said that Andhra Pradesh would become the first State globally out of the 3,000 provincial governments to have a direct agreement with ETS for conduct of the globally competitive exams.
Students would be divided into two categories of ‘TOEFL Young Student Series Primary’ for Classes 3 to 5 and ‘TOEFL Young Student Series Junior’ for Classes 6 to 10. Students of Classes 3 and 4 in the ‘Primary’ category will write one certified readiness test in the end of the academic year (March), while their seniors from Class 5 will write the test in mid-term or October and the final certification test in March (as per schedules for formative/summative assessments).
In the ‘Junior’ category, students of Classes 6 to 8 will write a certified readiness test in March and those from Class 9 in the mid-term or October and final certification test in March. “TOEFL Junior Speaking Tests will assess the English-speaking skills of Class 10 students,” he explained.
The e-content AV would be played through smart TVs thrice a week. “In the ‘primary’ category, for students of Classes 3 to 4, it will be a preparatory exam while for Class 5 students, it will be a globally competitive exam. Likewise, in the ‘junior’ category, it will be a preparatory exam for students of Classes 6 to 8, while their seniors from Class 9 would write a global competitive exam,” he said.
As an encouragement for teachers, the English teacher of the best high school and the best primary school in every district, whose students perform the best in the State, will be sent to Princeton, USA for a three-day immersion programme, said Mr. Praveen Prakash.
To help students in government schools switch to English as a medium of instruction, the government has launched a slew of initiatives such as introduction of bilingual textbooks and content in tabs and IFPs, affiliation of government schools with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), establishing English labs in government schools, use of Oxford dictionaries for students and appointment of English subject teachers from Class 3.
