When IELTS Gets It Wrong

According to a recent report in the Guardian UK, up to 80,000 candidates worldwide may have received incorrect results, with some failing candidates being told they had passed.

The recent revelations about a massive marking ‘blunder’ did not surprise me at all. Working for IDP in India (or rather, their subcontractor Planet Edu) I started reporting a lot of odd behaviour and answers from students, as did many of my Australian and Canadian colleagues, some of whom were accused of making mistakes in their scoring, and promptly sacked with the certification to examine when they return home taken away.

I know of colleagues who wrote letters to IDP in Melbourne, who wrote letters to media outlets and governmental departments and were ignored (and some sacked). This is was 2017!

Meanwhile, other students put in countless hours of study, often balancing jobs and family responsibilities, because they know how much rides on their IELTS score. I know badly needed professionals who had spend years in Australia already working in education or medical fields who gave up on their IELTS and Australia, because they couldn’t get the score to prove they were worthy of the job they already had. Meanwhile, we import a bunch of low integrity cheaters with no intention of contributing or working in the field they claimed to be educated in.

Cheating and Integrity

What makes this situation worse is the evidence of cheating rings in countries like China, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, where leaked test papers were sold to candidates. Yes, in India they lined up outside the hotels to collect answers from candidates and they sent fake candidates in to collect papers. We all knew it was happening. We reported it and were accused of making things up or sacked.

For those of us who teach or took IELTS preparation, this is disheartening. We encourage students to trust the process, to believe that their effort will be rewarded fairly. But when the system itself falters, that trust is eroded.

Questions That Need Answers

If I were a journalist, I’d be asking the IELTS partners—British Council, Cambridge, and IDP (which is headquartered here in Melbourne)—some tough questions:

1. What exactly caused the marking error?
2. How many tests were truly affected? “Less than 1%” is too vague when millions sit the exam each year.
3. Were older test administrations impacted? If results from before August 2023 were compromised, some candidates may never be notified because their scores have already expired.
4. Were there cases where scores were wrong but didn’t change the band level? If so, were these included in the official figures?

Why This Matters to Me

 I watched students wrestle with grammar, pronunciation, and essay writing. I see their determination, their sacrifices, and their hopes pinned on a single test result. When a ‘blunder’ of this scale occurs, it doesn’t just affect governments or institutions—it affects real people. It affects the student who worked nights to pay for lessons, the nurse who studied English after long hospital shifts, the family who dreamed of a new life in Australia.

Until the partners provide clear answers and reforms, the credibility of English language testing—and by extension, the integrity of Australia’s migration system—remains in doubt.?

Source: Thousands of migrants let in despite failing language tests