Culture & Education | Thursday 11 June, 2015 3:09 pm |

Minister of Education Azzam Al-Dakhil opened the world’s largest computerized testing center at King Saud University in Riyadh on Wednesday.

The center can offer 100,000 tests a year, including on general skills, standard academic achievements, English and Arabic language proficiency, overall skills for university graduates, teaching, health specialists, and those needed by the Ministry of Labor.
Those present included Prince Faisal Al-Meshari, head of the National Center for Measurement and Evaluation (Kiaas), and Badran bin Abdulrahman Al-Omar, director of King Saud University.

Al-Mashari said the center is the largest of its kind in the world, and offers computerized tests throughout the year. This is the second such center in Riyadh, with the other one in Al-Nasiriyah district, he said.
More centers would be opened across the country including at Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University, King Abdulaziz University, Effat University, the University of Dammam, the University of Hail, the University of Qassim, and the University of Tabuk, a local daily reported.

Al-Meshari said the center was opened in partnership with Pearson International Company, which has a number of locations outside the Kingdom including New York, Washington, San Francisco, Houston, Toronto, Frankfurt, London, Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne and Istanbul.

Saleh Al-Saleem, managing director of Kiaas, said a five-year plan has been formulated to set up testing centers at more than 90 sites in the Kingdom. He said the location at King Saud University is the 21st in the Kingdom, and the largest worldwide.
Al-Saleem said More than 255,000 tests have been conducted since the launch of the project, he said.