Paragon develops, delivers, and licenses in partnership with other organizations English proficiency tests, including: the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program (CELPIP) Test, the Canadian Academic English Language (CAEL) Test, and the Language Proficiency Index (LPI) Test. It also develops, delivers, and licenses in partnership with other organizations online and print self-study materials, test preparation programs, and test delivery and registration software.
Our Vision
Our Advantages
Re-investing in the Future
- Paragon continues to invest substantial resources into maintaining and improving the reliability, accuracy, and validity of its CELPIP, CAEL, and LPI Tests in order to meet or exceed industry standards in the English proficiency testing environment. These investments involve not only developing the best possible test content, but also continuing to improve and monitor the consistency with which test taker responses are evaluated.
Building Digital Solutions
- Unlike its principal competitors, Paragon has also invested very significant resources into developing the best possible electronic platforms and procedures to register test takers, deliver test content, capture test taker responses, and distribute these responses to raters and receive them back for aggregation into final scores. Such platforms and procedures also allow Paragon to exceed industry standards to detect, prosecute, and prevent fraud before, during, or after testing.
Fostering Research Partnerships
- In July 2015 Paragon finalized a partnership with UBC’s Faculty of Education and Office of the Provost to invest $1.8 million over the next five years to enhance UBC’s standing as a global leader in research and graduate student training in psychometrics. This partnership is benefiting both UBC and Paragon as psychometrics is a pillar of Paragon’s business and UBC is a pillar of psychometrics in Canada. This initiative is being led by Dr. Bruno Zumbo, who has recently been appointed to the newly created “Paragon UBC Professorship in Psychometrics and Measurement”.
Our Facilities
Paragon began its operations in the Scarfe Building that houses the Faculty of Education on the Vancouver campus of UBC. In 2010 the company moved to the Donald Rix Building in the Discover Parks area of UBC that houses several of the University’s start-up companies, and in 2013 expanded its space to include offices in the Gerald McGavin Building. Paragon moved its offices off of the UBC campus in 2014 to the Broadway Tech Centre, and subsequently expanded its space at that location in 2015. Currently the company’s headquarters occupy 12,500 square feet for its offices and on-site test centre. In August 2016, Paragon established a secondary office and test centre in Toronto, Ontario where it occupies 4,000 square feet of office space.
Paragon began its operations with only two test centres that delivered the computerized CELPIP Tests, including one in Vancouver and one in Toronto. The paper-based LPI Tests were delivered at 25 universities and colleges that were located primarily in British Columbia, but also in Alberta, Ontario, and Hong Kong, as well as at more than 25 secondary schools in British Columbia and Alberta.
Since its founding, the company has rapidly expanded its test centres across Canada and internationally to now include over 70 test centres worldwide. Paragon’s first international CELPIP test centres are now open in UAE, USA, India, and the Philippines.
