NTA invites applications from educators for confidential academic assignments

The National Testing Agency (NTA) has invited Expressions of Interest (EoI) from academicians, scientists, researchers, professionals and educators to join a three-year panel of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for question paper setting, translation, vetting, moderation, answer key verification, curriculum mapping, research, psychometric validation and other confidential academic assignments.

Interested candidates can apply till October 9.

According to the NTA, the empanelled experts may be called upon to undertake one or more of the following confidential academic activities, depending on their area of expertise and NTA’s operational requirements.

The experts will be tasked with authoring questions of specified format, difficulty level, and curricular alignment for one or more NTA examinations, vet questions developed by other experts for content accuracy, curricular alignment, language clarity, difficulty calibration, distractor quality, and fairness.

Another key responsibility listed by the NTA is answer-key verification and challenge resolution. Experts may be required to examine challenges raised by candidates against provisional answer keys and provide reasoned responses.

The experts will also be required to maintain and update the secure item banks, including tagging and calibrating questions, retiring over-exposed items and adding fresh questions.

The panel may further contribute to subject-level committees dealing with syllabus review, examination schemes and policy inputs, besides curriculum mapping, development of test specifications and blueprints, pilot studies and research on examination quality.

According to the NTA, the applicant must not be associated, directly or indirectly, in any capacity, with any candidate-coaching organisation, test-preparation company, exam-coaching institute, online or offline tutoring platform, or any private entity engaged in the business of preparing candidates for NTA examinations or similar entrance examinations.

It also says that the applicant must not have authored, co-authored, contributed to, edited or endorsed any commercially-published preparation material, mock test, question bank or sample paper for NTA examinations or similar entrance examinations, in the last five years.

“The applicant must not have any active or recent commercial relationship with any candidate-facing test-preparation entity in the last three years, and no immediate family member of the applicant (spouse, children, parents, siblings) should be appearing for any NTA examination in the years for which the applicant is empanelled…,” it said.

The applicant will also have to undergo a comprehensive background and integrity verification before empanelment, the NTA said.

The agency has also specified restrictions on how confidential work is to be carried out. Empanelled experts will be required to sign a comprehensive Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) at the time of empanelment, and re-affirm it at the start of every assignment.

It also asks those empanelled to refrain from any post-empanelment commercial association with candidate-coaching entities for a period of 2 years from the date of the last assignment, in line with NTA’s cool-off norms.