National Testing Service

In Pakistan, the National Testing Service - Pakistan (often abbreviated as NTS) is a charitable organisation that is responsible for the administration of academic performance assessment exams. It is comparable to the Educational Testing Service, which is located in the United States. The National Testing Service is a participant in the activities of the International Association for Educational Assessment. Additionally, it has accreditation from the Higher Education Commission.

The National Testing Service (NTS) provides candidates with two primary options for evaluating their skills: the National Aptitude Test (NAT) and the Graduate Assessment Test (GAT). The NAT is designed for high school students who are looking to enrol in four-year colleges and universities, while the GAT is designed for college graduates who are looking to enrol in postgraduate programmes. Exams given by the NTS are also used to decide whether or not students are qualified for advanced study in a foreign country.

The National Testing Service (NTS) was established to maintain high educational standards in Pakistan and "to provide a national scale for comparative grading between institutes." This was accomplished by bringing all of Pakistan's examination boards under the jurisdiction of a single administrative body. According to Shahid Siddiqui, director of The Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics, tests that were implemented prior to the development of the NTS were criticised for not accommodating socio-cultural differences, which resulted in the need for "an indigenous testing service that should design and develop testing materials within an indigenous context." The NTS was established in order to fulfil this need. Students who want to enrol in prestigious Pakistani universities like COMSATS University (CU), Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU), Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS), Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering (CASE), and the Islamia University of Bahawalpur (IUB) are required to have passed tests given by the National Testing Service (NTS) in order to be considered for admission to those universities.