Over 16 lakh government school students to write TOEFL in April
The successful students will receive certificates from the Educational Testing Service, says School Education Principal Secretary Praveen Prakash.
Over 16 lakh students from classes three to nine in the Staterun schools will write their first ever TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) readiness test in April. In total, 16,24,100 students are expected to write the test in Foundation, Foundation Plus, High Schools and PreHigh Schools that have smart TV sets and interactive flat panels.
School Education Principal Secretary Praveen Prakash told The Hindu that the certificates would be digitally stored.
“We want to upload all certificates onto the DigiLocker after assessment. A collaboration with DigiLocker and the village and ward secretariats department is being considered to facilitate the process. The students will be given printed copies of the certificates,” he said. DigiLocker is a platform for issuing and verification of documents and certificates in a digital mode.
The key priority now, he said, is to encourage the parents to download the DigiLocker app on their smartphones. A concerted effort should be made to ensure that the parents of all the 16,24,100 students download this app by March 30.
This proactive approach will contribute to the seamless distribution and preservation of TOEFL certificates among the students, he said.
The students of third to fifth classes will write the test on April 10. The test will comprise 27 questions—14 related to listening and 13 to reading. The students of sixth to ninth classes will write the test comprising 20 questions— 10 each related to listening and reading—on April 12.
“The successful students will receive a certificate of achievement from the Educational Testing
Service (ETS),” said Mr. Praveen Prakash.
The ETS is a private nonprofit organisation, which designs and administers the tests and also issues official score report which are sent independently to institutions.
The Andhra Pradesh government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Princetonbased ETS “to provide customised English assessments to students in the Staterun schools. As part of this fiveyear initiative, the ETS will evaluate and certify the English language proficiency of the students in government schools through its TOEFL Young Students Series assessments.
“We aim to strengthen the language capabilities of our students and promote academic excellence by equipping them with the necessary skills to excel on the national and international learning metrics,” said Mr. Praveen Prakash.