Counting down to O-Net

Last February, nearly 320,000 students took the Ordinary National Education Test (O-Net). It was the first time that Niets administered the O-Net as a national exam for all students leaving high schools.

With each student having to complete five subjects in the O-Net, the exam generated more than 1. 5 million exam papers. This figure will remain so next year.

With only four months to prepare, the deadline is just around the corner for the National Institute for Educational Testing Services (Niets), the O-Net administrator.

Following a series of systematic failures that converged into announcements of incorrect exam results last April, Niets found itself in limbo for at least three months after its director and five executive board members resigned.

Last month a search committee, led by former High Education Commission secretary general Pavich Thongroach, appointed Prof Dr Utumporn Jamornmann as Niets' new director. Out of 14 candidates, Dr Utumporn received a unanimous vote to head the office.

``Prof Utumporn is not a new face at Niets,'' Pavich said in a press conference earlier in September. ``She was one of the committee members who helped establish Niets and has headed the admissions forum all along,'' he added.

Setting strategies

Graduated with a PhD in statistics and educational assessments from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1972, Dr Utumporn has collected more than 30 years of experience in educational assessments and evaluations.

In her exclusive interview with Learning Post, Dr Utumporn appears both calm and confident. Her eyes reflect the level of determination that emanates a readiness for the job.

``I think four months are probably enough to prepare for the O-Net,'' she says.

``Right now, we are preparing a database for the list of schools and students that will participate in the O-Net next February. So far, our figure remains at more than 5,000 schools.'' Unlike last February, when every Mathayom 6 student had to apply for an exam seat through the Niets website, all current Mathayom 6 students are automatically entitled to take the O-Net next February.

Each school is to submit an official list of Mathoyom 6 candidates to Niets and by the end of November, Dr Utumporn expects to complete the list of Mathayom 6 examinees. Non-Mathayom 6 students who would like to take the exam, however, must apply through the websites of Niets or one of its 18 exam centres nationwide.

Dr Utumporn decided early on to prepare the student database in advance, in order to avoid confusion caused by matching an answer sheet with the wrong student identification number. Similar errors contributed to the delay in announcing the final exam scores last April.

For next February, Dr Utumporn has delegated the task of on-sight exam administration to the 18 universities that will act as exam centres. These universities have accumulated more than 30 years of experience in administering entrance exams under the previous university admissions system, she says.

``I provide to these universities broad guidelines on how to run the exams; however, the implementation of the measures remains within their purview. But we must keep each other in the loop because we are essentially making these decisions together,'' she explains.

In contrast to last February, Niets will only be administering the O-Net, as the Council of University Rectors decided in August that it, together with the Higher Education Commission, would take over from Niets next year's administration of A-Net (Advanced National Education Test) exams. This shared workload, coupled with the elimination of the written exams, should also make grading and scoring less complicated.

``Right now, we are in the process of screening the exam questions, based on assessment objectives, levels of difficulty, and relevance to the curriculum,'' Dr Utumporn says. The exam questions, she adds, are derived from the basic education curriculum and are written by current school teachers nationwide.

Plugging the gaps

Despite a carefully planned strategy, Niets' director expresses a concern on the compilation of databases for both the exam takers and exam locations. ``These databases must be detailed enough to indicate the final number of exam takers as well as which school each student is from and the exact room and location where each student will take the O-Net exam,'' she says, adding that the logistics of assigning each student to the correct exam location, for example, is equally important.

Last February, the problem of wrongly assigned students and unmatched answer sheets resulted in more than 200,000 answer sheets (including A-Net answer sheets) unidentified or misidentified. In order to prevent the recurrence of this problem, Dr Utumporn asks the 18 exam centres to map out and identify both the exam locations and exam takers within their own areas.

``Each exam centre will submit a report that sets out the number and location of exam rooms under its jurisdiction; the seating capacity of each exam room; the names and number of exam proctors; and the number of surrounding buildings in the testing compound,'' she says.

In the upcoming O-Net exams, two proctors will monitor each exam room with a maximum capacity of 40 examinees. Exam rooms that hold more than 40 examinees, she adds, will have two proctors per each set of 40 students tested.

Once the O-Net exam is over, the last task for each exam centre is to manage the logistics of coordinating all answer sheets, which include checking the basic student information as well as matching the number of exam takers with the number of answer sheets. By doing so, Niets has only 18 sources to check in case there is a problem that has to be traced back to its source.

``I cannot guarantee that similar problems will not recur in the upcoming administration of the O-Net exams,'' Dr Utumporn says. ``But I think they should somehow be minimised because Niets is trying its best to close those problematic gaps. ''

Remaining challenges

Peerapong Sangsoungnoin: "I'm 70 to 80 percent confident in [Niets]."

Although Niets, with help from the Higher Education Commission and the Council of University Rectors, eventually resolved the chaos incurred by last February's O-Net and A-Net exams, the task of restoring students' trust remains a challenge.

``I'm 70 to 80 percent confident in [Niets],'' says Peerapong Sangsoungnoin, a Mathayom 6 student at Sri Ayudhya school.

``What I'm most worried about is the working system. They seem to be new to this field of work,'' he elaborates. ``But I'm very happy that [Niets] dropped the written part,'' adds Peerapong's classmate, Siprapa Phupasook.

``It's not clear what kind of grading methods they use to grade the written exam. For next year, even though the written part has been abolished, I'm not 100 percent confident in Niets,'' she says.

Siprapa Phupasook: "I'm not 100 percent confident in Niets."

Dr Utumporn, however, remains positive, even though Niets is short of staff and is operating without a full complement of executive board members. To her, the lessons from last February have shown her the areas that need further improvements.

``No matter where you go in the world, administering an exam of this scale brings anxiety to everyone involved. So, this job is not an easy task for anyone. But I'm in it because I think this job is not completely out of my reach,'' she says.

Whether or not student and parental confidences are successfully restored remains to be seen. Even with a successful run of the O-Net next February, Dr Utumporn realises that her job does not end there. Before her four-year term ends in September 2010, the remaining challenge is to get Niets up and running again and to ensure that it can eventually perform its duty as the national testing centre, which includes administering exams for other grade levels and educational purposes.

``If Niets failed and collapsed, I would feel very sorry because many people, through their good will, have already put so much work and effort into establishing it,'' she says. ``As one of the people [who pushed through the establishment of Niets], how can I not step in and help it through the hard times?''

As Dr Utumporn speaks about all her plans to reform Niets, to resurrect Niet's reputation, and to prepare for next year's O-Net exam, her time is running out to accomplish these formidable tasks.

For more information on the upcoming O-Net exam, visit Niets' new website at www. niets. or. th .