Getting over the O-Net

Students double-check their answer sheets at Chulalongkorn University.

WAs the director of the newly established National Institute of Education Testing Service (Niets), Seven months ago, Associate Professor Prateep Chankong appeared in front ofstood before a crowd of more than 400 parents, teachers, and students. As the director of the newly established National Institute of Education Testing Service (NIETS) Niets is a public organisation specifically set up to administer the standardised national exams. , Assoc. Prof. Prateep Assoc. Prof. Prateep He gave a two-hour talkspoke for two hours on the cutting edge new central university admissions system and, more specifically, on the national education standardised tests examinations (standardised exams) that would replace the traditional 40-year-old university entrance examinations (traditional exams)s. Niets is a public organisation specifically set up to administer the standardised national exams. That was seven months ago.

Khunying Sumontha Phrombun

Today Assoc. Prof. Prateep is the acting director of Niets, but as the former head of Niets, he found he was an easy target for criticism and the centre of undesired attention Today, Assoc. Prof. Prateep finds himself a centre of undesirable attention, after following the announcements of national exam results - of the tainted results of the Ordinary National Education Test (O-Net) and the Advanced National Education Test (A-Net). The defective exam results of the standardized exams - ended up stallinghalted the entire university admissions process. As head of the NIETS, a public organisation specifically set up to administer national exams, Assoc. Prof. Prateep becomes a natural target.

However, the establishment of a system as crucial and massive as the national exam system for university admissions is the responsibility and work of many parties. And to be sure, the undertaking was on a massive scale: 4.6 million exam papers (double the previous number) and 318,000 examinees. From the beginning the system was hampered by delays. Despite the critical role it would play in the new university admissions system, Niets' was not created until about August 2005, and then only after the Office of Higher Education Commission (OHEC) and the University Presidents Council of Thailand finalised the admissions criteria, including the GPA weighting. Another crucial month was lost before Niets was officially established by Royal Decree, on September 3.

"Niets was established a bit too late," says Niets' former executive board chairman Khunying Sumontha Phrombun. The original plan, she adds, was to establish Niets three years earlier [in 2003], so that there would be plenty of time to test and evaluate the new system. In reality, "the process went straight from planning to actual implementation, because the one-year period for conducting the pilot test had already passed," she said.

The perfect storm scenario of not having enough time to adequately prepare, being deprived of a chance to conduct a practice run of the entire examination process using a sampling of students under authentic test conditions, and not having an opportunity in advance to verify exam results using the new computerized exam grading system, combined to produce the faulty exam results. As a consequence, during the actual standardised exams students were largely unfamiliar with how to properly complete the answer sheets or the new testing procedures. Logistics problems, such as not having enough answer sheets also contributed to the confluence.

The defective results were publicly announced by Niets on April 1, April 11, and April 30. Only about five percent of 4.6 million exams contained highly improbable scores, but the questionable scores resulted in a public clamour with a concomitant loss of public confidence in Niets and the standardised exams system. Had the announcements of the O-Net and A-Net scores been without controversy, students applying for a seat in state universities most likely would have been able to proceed to the next step in the central university admissions process, and Niets would have quietly passed the torch to the OHEC.

A grander mission

The 1999 National Education Act mandates the overhaul of the country's education system and calls for the establishment of an organisation such as Niets to independently evaluate the nationwide quality of education in Thailand, and to further evaluate whether or not Thai schools are providing an acceptable standard of public education. Consequently, Niets' role is not limited to administering the O-Net and A-Net, but rather involves the broader mission of evaluating the country's educational and vocational systems through standardised exams.

In measuring the national standard of education, Khunying Sumontha adds, Niets only needs to tabulate overall statistics. But the fact that the Higher Education Commission and University Presidents Council decided to begin using the central admissions system this year prompted Niets to administer the O-Net and A-Net as part of the admissions requirements this year.

Despite the O-Net and A-Net fiasco, the national standardised exams have the potential of improving the overall quality of education in Thailand once they are administered and graded properly. In theory, the O-Net (which tests students' knowledge on general subjects) and A-Net (which tests students' special skills demanded by some university faculties) are designed to repair problems of the traditional entrance exam system, which for more than 40 years was the primary decider of the fates and futures of thousands of students. The Ministry of Education believed the students' GPA and GPAX, combined with the two standardised exams, could more accurately determine students' abilities than did the traditional entrance exams.

Traditional entrance exams, given to Mathayom six students at the end of their last school term, academics say, were unnecessarily difficult and mostly irrelevant because the exam content was designed entirely by university lecturers, based on first-year university level textbooks. With O-Net and A-Net, says Assoc. Prof. Prateep during a University Fair seminar last October, secondary school teachers and university lecturers work together in year-round workshops in order to formulate the exam content.

In contrast, "The [O-Net and A-Net] exams are based on the principle that students must complete the entire upper secondary curriculum," he says. This, he adds, should reduce the need for students to enroll in cram schools because the exam content comes directly out of the standard textbooks for upper secondary schools.

"Tying the O-Net with university admissions means students put genuine effort into completing the exams, but it also means having zero error because each student will be using these individualised scores to apply for a university seat," Khunying Sumontha says.

Unfortunately, the on-going complications with announcing the test scores have overshadowed the original reason for Niets' existence. Now, many students and parents are questioning the efficacy of the university admissions system itself and whether or not the OHEC should revert to using the traditional entrance system for 2007.

Lessons learned

While many fingers are pointing at Niets for this year's O-Net and A-Net difficulties, a positive sign for improvement was signaled by the fact that both Khunying Sumontha and Assoc. Prof. Prateep acknowledged that failures had occurred. In an effort to accept responsibility for some of the failures, Assoc. Prof. Prateep refused to participate in the on-going re-appointment process after his six-month term as director of Niets ended in February. In a similar vein, Khunying Sumontha graciously resigned from her position on April 17.

Regarding the on-going dilemma, Khunying Sumontha attributes complications in announcing test scores to Niets' own administrative weaknesses. "It's the problem [associated with] managing a high volume of exam papers and test takers, of lacking familiarity with the technology used in grading the exam, of instructing examiners to watch over the way students fill in personal information more carefully, and of administering the scanning and retrieving exam papers into and from the machine[s]," she says.

This year, under the central admissions system, there were 4.6 million exam papers, double the number under the traditional entrance system. Of the 349,000 applicants to take the O-net and A-net, 318,000 students sat for the exams, says Assoc. Prof. Prateep. There were 18 testing centres nationwide. Each examination room contained about 30 examinees and two test monitors.

Administering an exam on such a massive scale for the first time, given the limited time for preparation, was a formidable task for Niets. With the high volume of students involved, says Khunying Sumontha, even a human error of one percent cannot be allowed as it could result in 4,000 students being unable to proceed with their application for admission.

"From now on, we have to start looking at training both the students and staff in preparing for next year's exams. Knowing our mistakes from this year's experience, we must not continue to make the same ones again," she says.

Despite the limitations and complications, the central university admissions will likely continue. In order to alleviate the pressure on this year's incoming freshmen, the University Presidents Council and the OHEC have extended the deadline for application submission for freshmen. The council has also authorized students whose O-Net and A-Net scores have not yet been finalised to proceed with the submission of their applications for admission, even if it means leaving the scores blank.

"The University Presidents Council is confident in the re-scoring of the exams because they have gone through quite a number of checking and rechecking by both the Niets and the Office of Higher Education Commission," said Chulalongkorn University rector Suchada Kiranandana following a University Presidents Council meeting on April 29.

The council, however, has yet to decide on whether or not to maintain the GPA and GPAX requirements at 30 percent next year or increase them to 40 percent. Once this year's university admission process is resolved, a major administrative revamp must take place, both at the ministry and operational levels in order to restore the confidence of students and parents.