ETS Europe

ETS Europe is the European arm of Educational Testing Service, an American company, involved in scholastic assessment in Europe.

It is headquartered in Utrecht in the Netherlands. ETS employs about 2,700 individuals, including 240 with doctorates 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, 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.

About 25% of the work carried out by ETS is contracted by the private, not for profit firm, the College Board. The most popular of the College Board's tests is the SAT, taken by more than 3 million students annually. ETS also develops and administers The College Board's Advanced Placement program, which is widely used in US high schools for advanced course credit.

In England and Wales ETS Europe were contracted to operate the National Curriculum assessments on behalf of the government. ETS took over this role from Edexcel 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 of student entries being unavailable, [7] , 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. [8] Their contract with the QCA was terminated in August 2008: ETS is to pay back £19.5m and cancel invoices worth £4.6m.

The ETS Europe website [http://www.uk.etseurope.org/?yourcountry=UK] describes itself as " the world leader in the field of educational and business assessment. At the forefront of educational research, and in the development of performance assessments, ETS ... offers reliable assessments and tests measuring English and French language proficiency, as well as customised solutions to European academic institutions, businesses and government agencies."