AP signs MoU with ETS for improving communication skills of govt school students

VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Friday took the reforms in AP’s educational sector to the next level by signing an MoU with the US organisation ETS (Educational Testing Service) with the aim of improving the communication skills of government school students from the basic level and preparing them for TOEFL.

As part of the measures being taken to help government school students from Class 3 to 10 to attain an international accent in English and their abilities to face TOEFL, the AP government has signed the agreement with ETS in the presence of the chief minister at his Camp Office here.

The MoU was signed by Lejo Oommen and Srinivasa Rao, project director of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, on behalf of the ETS India and the state government respectively.

The chief minister said the government wants its citizens to become globally employable. “What I request is that you put in more empathy and passion in training our students in passing the TOEFL. If we can transform their lives, we would be doing a great service to their families and it could be a service to God as it helps the uplift of the downtrodden,” he observed.

Jagan Reddy advised the ETS representatives to not stop at the junior level but take up the training classes at the senior level also gradually as students would try to go abroad for undergraduate courses after completing Plus 1 and 2 (Intermediate courses).

Disclosing that almost 30200 class rooms, or 50 per cent of the total class rooms, would be digitized by July end and students above Class VI would be learning through IFPs, the chief minister asked them to formulate plans on how to integrate the courses with the curriculum and improve the teaching abilities effectively to take the entire programme forward successfully.

Besides giving Byjus-content loaded tabs to students of Class VIII, bilingual textbooks are also being provided to students, he said.
 
As part of the MoU, ETS will train and conduct preparatory TOEFL examinations to students of Classes III to X.

ETS senior director Alain Daumas, who led the delegation, expressed happiness over the MoU. “This collaboration between the government and ETS is a testament to the progressive approach the state has taken towards providing students with global opportunities and fostering their academic excellence,” he said.

He said ETS has been extending its services to students in 180 countries.

Education minister B Satyanaraana, principal secretary Praveen Prakash, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan project director Srinivasa Rao, Midday Meals director Nidhi Meena, NCERT director Pratap Reddy and other senior officials were present.

On behalf of the ETS, Rui Ferreira, associate vice president of Assessment, Daniel F. Mc Caffrey, Fredric M. Lord Chair of Measurement and Statistics, Amit Kapoor, co-founder and director, Kapil Chanana, chief growth officer, and Rajiv Razdan, vice president Digital Sales India (Eupheus Learning) were also present.