most educational service providers form part of the umbrella organisation edventure central mechanisms for student assessment school evaluation and education system evaluation have been in place for several decades along with requirements for schools to assure their own quality this longstanding focus on developing reliable evaluation and assessment systems has allowed the central agencies to experiment with different approaches and develop and deepen their expertise overtime in the netherlands the national assessments and examinations currently used by most schools have existed for over years cito created in was one of the first influential national testing institutes within the oecd and enjoys a high international reputation for its expertise and assessment instruments chapter while there are different views as to how the results should be used the usefulness of standardised assessments to inform certification accountability and improvement strategies is widely accepted among stakeholders