The National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE), Automotive Youth Educational Systems (AYES) and Skills USA recently announced an agreement to provide co-branded end of program exams for students in secondary and post-secondary automotive technology programs.

The new exams will merge the well-known National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF) End-of-Program tests into a joint offering from the three groups. The boards and leaders of all three organizations agree that this a tremendous example of association partnership to best serve the needs of students, schools and the automotive service industry.

Through NATEF, ASE will oversee the question development and delivery of the exams for all three organizations. Candidates and instructors will be able to access the exam through a single co-branded test entry portal. Partner websites will link to this common portal. A Spring 2009 launch is anticipated.

 “This combined effort will provide our AYES high school students with quality testing that is industry led and nationally recognized,” says Susan Moe, executive director of AYES. Tim Lawrence, SkillsUSA executive director, says he agrees. “Taking advantage of this unique co-branding opportunity helps us provide our students industry developed assessments without reinventing the process," he adds. "The automobile, truck and collision repair areas of SkillsUSA will also be covered with the new co-branded assessments.”

“ASE is proud to provide our assessment development expertise and partner with leaders in our industry such as AYES and SkillsUSA. The students will benefit from having just one set of end of program exams that are endorsed by our three organizations,” says Tim Zilke, ASE President & CEO.

For more information, visit www.ase.com, www.ayes.org or www.skillsusa.org.