Over three days this November-December, 5,721 English teachers selected by Ecuador‘s Ministry of Education for English proficiency evaluation were administered iTEP. At one point, 1,235 teachers were taking iTEP simultaneously at 98 test sites across 24 provinces of Ecuador. iTEP was selected for the initiative, which will test over 6,500 teachers in total, by INEVAL (National Institute for Educational Evaluation), a governmental entity in charge of promoting the excellence in the Ecuadorian education system through impartial assessments of instructors.

“Maintaining high levels of English proficiency of English teachers is an key issue for educational institutions throughout the world,” says iTEP Chairman Perry Akins. “We applaud INEVAL for ensuring that the English teachers of Ecuador are sufficiently qualified, and are thrilled that iTEP was selected for this initiative. Our iTEP Ecuador team as well as our US-based staff did a fantastic job with this undertaking.”

iTEP Ecuador, the local distributor of iTEP, was instrumental in planning and executing the large number of tests in a short time period. The iTEP Ecuador team worked with INEVAL and the Ministry of Education to put in place processes, protocols and trainings to ensure that test proctors and technology met iTEP International’s standards and would produce reliable and accurate test results. They also created custom tools to distribute reports rapidly. “We had a helpdesk who were able to support the proctors and solve problems during the administration of the tests, which is a good strategy to ensure success on projects like this one,” says Mariadelaida Uribe de Plaza of iTEP Ecuador. “Governments, countries and large educational institutions can look to this project as an example of how streamlined a large-scale testing initiative like this can be.”

“This project in Ecuador is opening doors for iTEP to continue to grow in the Spanish-speaking market,” says Akins. “This was a perfect example of iTEP being used to its fullest extent, not just as an assessment, but as a tool on which to base public policies to improve the English level of teachers and students.”