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TOEFL® Young Students Series embedded in “Erasmus +” project

Supporting educational exchange in the European Union

ETS, ETS Global and ETS Global’s partner - Goal Testing B.V. in cooperation with the a Foundation of K12 schools ‘OPO hof van Twente’ and other project partner schools from Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, have begun their two-year-journey designed to innovate the way English is taught in an academic environment and excel in Information and Communications technology (ICT) skills while doing so. The project is called iBUILD-IT and is funded by Erasmus+ which is a part of a large European Union programme focused on facilitating educational innovation and exchange.

ETS, ETS Global and ETS Global’s partner - Goal Testing B.V. in cooperation with the a Foundation of K12 schools ‘OPO hof van Twente’ and other project partner schools from Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, have begun their two-year-journey designed to innovate the way English is taught in an academic environment and excel in Information and Communications technology (ICT) skills while doing so. The project is called iBUILD-IT  and is funded by Erasmus+ which is a part of a large European Union programme focused on facilitating educational innovation and exchange.

The project was conceived in response to the Covid-19 pandemic with an aim to deliver continuous, personalized solutions for English language teaching (ELT) and inspire high-quality guidance for every individual child, either at home, at school, or in any additional hybrid form of education. The project will leverage the TOEFL® Young Students Series (YSS) to measure students’ proficiency regularly, monitor their progress and provide evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of personalized learning. By offering independent assessment tools, teachers are free within the project’s learning framework to implement an appropriate methodology, curriculum material, and/or educational tools which they consider will contribute to their learners’ language development.

ETS makes a research team available to work together with the teachers involved in the project for two years to deliver successful research outputs linked to the project.

Goal Testing’s role is to supervise the administration of the TOEFL Primary® and the TOEFL Junior® tests to support the adaptive way that English will be taught in schools across the Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark.

From the 25th to the 27th of May 2021 all the project partners came together for the first Teacher Training Week, of the project. All 6 schools involved in the project identified 20 teachers who discussed their vision of education and how they manage to address issues such as differentiation, technology implementation, school culture, and more. This unique experience was an opportunity to join in on the sessions, listen to others’ experiences and celebrate the mutual efforts focused on bettering educational quality for all.

Jacqueline Jarvis, the ETS Director of the TOEFL® Young Students Series, joined one of the sessions and gave a brief presentation on ETS’s educational missions to advance quality and equity in education.

If you are interested in learning more about the progress of the project, please visit the project website that will offer regular updates.

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