The University Presidents Council of Thailand will meet next week to consider taking over responsibility for holding entrance exams after it was recently blamed for this year's scoring fiasco.

"It is now highly likely that we will establish a foundation to handle the tests by ourselves," Pratya Vesarach, president of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University and the current council chairman, said yesterday.

This year's university admission schedule was disrupted for weeks when the National Institute for Education Testing Services (NIETS) repeatedly failed to report correct test scores.

For several decades, the Higher Education Commission had organised the central university entrance exam, which came under heavy criticism as overly competitive and academically difficult, prompting authorities to look for an alternative.

In the past several years, agencies have included grades during senior high school years in admission criteria.

This year a new testing system was installed. NIETS conducted the O-Net (Ordinary National Educational Test) and A-Net (Advanced National Educational Test) to measure Grade-12 academic performance as well as to screen university applicants.

The O-Net and A-Net scores were used as main university admission criteria.

Pratya said that although the Higher Education Commission took charge of the entrance exams in the past, university staff had always lent a hand.

"Now we are going to hold our own tests and see if the Higher Education Commission will dispatch its officials to help," he said, adding that the admission process would likely be smoother and more responsive to universities' needs if the tests were supervised by the council-appointed foundation.

Acting NIETS director Wichien Ketsing said his office had no objection to the plan.

"We will be able to devote more time and attention to O-Net," he said. NIETS has the duty to arrange O-Net to evaluate students' academic performance for use in planning the country's education policies.

This year NIETS conducted the A-Net upon request from the council for use in university admission procedures.