PESHAWAR: Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan, while stressing the need of capacity enhancement of Education Testing and Evaluation Agency (ETEA) has directed the concerned authorities to come up with a feasible plan for strengthening and restructuring the agency in order to enable it effectively cope with the ever increasing needs of educational testing and evaluation adding that the ETEA being a sole and responsible testing agency of the provincial government is playing vital role in fast track testing & evaluation as well as in the recruitment of staff in transparent manners. He also directed to speed up the recruitment process of staff for provincial departments and assured that the provincial government will extend every possible support to strengthen the agency.
He was presiding over progress review meeting of ETEA at Chief Minister Secretariat Peshawar the other day. Advisor to Chief Minister for Higher Education Khaleeq ur Rehman, Secretary Higher Education, Executive Director ETEA and other attended the meeting.
The meeting was briefed about the administrative structure of ETEA, its functions and responsibilities, reforms, overall progress made so far, issues and other matters related to the capacity of ETEA. It was informed on the occasion that conduction of tests for professional collages i.e. Medical/Dental and Engineering, admission tests for educational institutes; promotional exams for employees of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police and recruitment of staff for provincial departments were the major functions of the ETEA.
The fee of entry tests for professional collages is fixed by the board of governors. The meeting was informed that during 2019 entry tests of 11,500 candidates have been conducted for engineering and 45000 candidates have been tested for medical collages. Similarly during the 2019, round about 03 lac candidates were tested for the recruitment on 5,861 vacancies in the 28 provincial departments.
Besides this, more than 09 thousands admission tests have also been conducted for the admission in various educational institutes of the province. During the current financial year above 56000 candidates would also be tested for the recruitment of staff in the 20 provincial departments. The meeting was further told that indoor arrangements for conduction of tests have been made as this facility was not available previously.
The current situation of corona pandemic has affected the recruitment process for provincial departments however, it was told that the process would be resumed with the approval of the provincial government and completed within the four month time. Amendments in the ETEA ordinance 2001 are also underway for addition of permanent members into the board of governors of ETEA as well as to declare the ETEA as authority.
The chief minister reiterated his commitment to extend all possible support to resolve the issues being faced by the ETEA and directed to take drastic measures to further enhance the capacity of ETEA. "Work on restructuring of ETEA should immediately be started in order to achieve the goals with regard to transparent, impartial and fast track testing and evaluation," he directed.-PR
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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