National Testing Service

National Testing Service - Pakistan (NTS) is a nonprofit organization in Pakistan that administers academic performance evaluation tests. It is a member of the International Association for Educational Assessment and the Higher Education Commission.

National Testing Service

NTS head office, Islamabad, Pakistan
Native name	نیشنل ٹیسٹنگ سروس
Company type	Public
Founded	2006; 19 years ago (2006)
Headquarters	Plot 96, Street 4, H-8/1, Islamabad
Key people	Tahir Aqeel (CEO)
Products	Graduate Assessment Test - General Graduate Assessment Test - Subject Law Graduate Assessment Test National Aptitude Test National Teachers Database Program Medical Representatives Certification Program
Services	Standardized testing
Website	nts.org.pk

NTS offers two main types of tests, the National Aptitude Test (NAT) and the Graduate Assessment Test (GAT).^[1]

NTS was formed to ensure quality educational standards in Pakistan and to "provide a national scale for comparative grading between institutes",^[2] consolidating examination boards under one administrating body.^[3] Tests implemented prior to the development of the NTS were criticized as not accommodating socio-cultural differences, resulting in a need for "an indigenous testing service that should design and develop testing materials within an indigenous context".^[4]

History

Controversy erupted in 2007 following the mandating of NTS testing, first announced by Governor of Punjab, with regards to admission to universities and later set aside by the government unless the laws regarding university admission were amended.^[5] Criticism included allegations that the services were inconvenient to access and prohibitively expensive to economically challenged students. Maqbool called for input from the vice-chancellors of Punjab's public universities on 4 June.^[6] That year, each university department was permitted to set its own entrance requirements, with six of 64 departments at Punjab University electing to utilize tests from NTS. In October 2007, the vice-chancellor of Punjab University, Muhammad Arif Butt, endorsed the use of NTS testing in all departments of the university. NTS director Haroon Rasheed said that no tuition centres are associated with the service and NTS exams will not be out of course.^[7]

Legal education

In 2016 the Pakistan Bar Council amended the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Rules 1976 pertaining to admission of new advocates to the provincial Bar Councils. The new rules required applicants to sit and pass the Law Graduate Assessment Test (Law GAT) conducted by National Testing Service.^[8][9]