ETS pledges to help transform Chinese education, expand its influence

As one of the world's largest private and nonprofit educational testing, assessment, research and learning organization, ETS will continue to offer services to Chinese students while facilitating the transformation of Chinese education and expanding its international influence, said a senior executive from the organization.

Wang Mengyan, managing director of ETS China, made the remarks at a ceremony to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the launching of the TOEFL and GRE tests in China in late October.

Since 1981, ETS, the developer of the TOEFL and GRE tests, has been committed to supporting Chinese students preparing to study abroad and bolstering China's opening-up and international exchange, according to Wang.

The internet-based TOEFL test, also known as TOEFL iBT, is now the world's test of English-language proficiency, accepted by more than 11,500 educational institutions in over 160 countries globally.

The GRE General Test, provides graduate, business and law schools with an objective measure of an applicant's readiness for graduate-level academic work.

Sun Haibo, director of the National Education Examinations Authority, said at the ceremony that ETS is the first and leading partner to China in providing examinations to enable Chinese students to study abroad.

"The TOEFL and GRE tests have earned a good reputation in the country over the last 40 years because of our collective efforts.

"Especially over the past decade, we stepped up cooperation to ensure the tests' fairness and integrity, which continue to receive wide public recognition," he said.

Wang also said the tests have strived to keep pace with China's development and continued to improve over the 40 years.

Since the launch of TOEFL iBT in 2006, ETS has taken multiple measures to enhance test takers' experience. These included instant unofficial scores for reading and listening sections and a MyBest Scores feature on students' score reports, which gives a combination of an applicant's best scores for each test section from all of their valid TOEFL iBT scores in the last two years.

In 2011, a redesigned GRE General Test was launched as a section-level adaptive test with new question types and new score scales.

"In addition, we launched the TOEFL Essentials test this year, which is an equally fair, valid, reliable and trusted test as the TOEFL iBT and is the first English-language test to combine the high quality that institutions trust with affordable access that students want," Wang said.

"All of these actions aim to help more students study abroad in a way that better meets their needs to advance international communication between China and the rest of the world," she said.

ETS has joined hands with governments and educational institutions as well as scholars and experts to facilitate English education and assessment in China.

Beijing Education Examinations Authority, for example, has teamed up with ETS in test question research, exam services and exam resources.

Meanwhile, ETS has also cooperated with Shanghai's education sector, providing training sessions for practitioners in the local education industry.

According to Wang, domestic international schools have also established close partnerships with ETS for targeted services and guidance on TOEFL testing.

In 2019, ETS worked with the NEEA to link TOEFL iBT scores to China's Standards of English Language Ability, making it the first full-range English proficiency scale in China.

ETS said the move enables Chinese standards to be comparable with international standards, paving the way for the future internationalization of Chinese standards.

As part of the efforts to further expand its investment in China, ETS announced last month that it is integrating its operations in Hong Kong, Macao and the Chinese mainland.

"China is a crucial overseas market for ETS as it has the largest number of TOEFL test takers in the world," Wang said.

ETS aims to become more involved in China's vocational and higher education in the future, offering its rich resources and experience as the world's leading educational assessment, research and learning organization.

"We hope to help Chinese students go to more diverse destinations and cultivate new international talents who can adapt to China's new development needs through our international tests," she said.

ETS is poised to strengthen collaboration with Chinese governments, universities and enterprises to boost the influence of the country in the international community and get China's voice better heard and understood, she added.

Also last month, ETS signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the China Education Association for International Exchange.

According to the agreement, the two parties will work to improve Chinese educational institutions' English teaching and assessment capabilities, provide quality English courses and jointly hold seminars and other activities for the development of China's international education market.

"Through this collaboration, we would like to promote the internationalization of Chinese education together with CEAIE and nurture a new generation of young Chinese students who will be the key group to tell China's story from a global perspective," Wang said.

"In the past 40 years, our guideline has been 'in China, for China'. We have helped millions of Chinese students realize their overseas study dreams. In the future, our guideline will be 'in China, for China and the world'.

"We hope to introduce the best practices from China to the world by facilitating more international education communication and exchanges," Wang said.