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One of the examiners that works for us recently had someone online talking about how IELTS keeps scores low so people have to do the exam again and again.  They implied that examiners were all ‘in on it’, marking low so that they/we got paid more money.

We thought we would just comment on it.

So, where do we start?

It’s true that many people end up having to do IELTS more than once.  There are many reasons for this like;

• their English is not as good as they think it is
• people self-studying (Madness!!)
• people not understanding the criteria
• poor teaching (Very very common – be careful where you get your information from)
• people self-studying (Did we mention that already?)
• People having a bad day
• etc etc

Part of the conspiracy theory though is that examiners mark people lower and this is just not true.  This is not a personality test.  Examiners hear all manner of racist, sexist, homophobic views but they are trained to evaluate the English they face; nothing more.

Why examiners are not deliberately scoring people lower.

Now, if examiners were deliberately keeping scores lower, this would mean that they are part of the conspiracy.  This shows that the conspiracy theorists seem to understand who the examiners are.

IELTS speaking and writing examiners are paid very poorly for the level of expertise that is expected.  For writing examiners, the pay has gone down by 70%, from approximately 5USD a task to less than 2USD.  For speaking examiners, the pay hasn’t changed for 20 years.  These are not people that are trying to make money out of you.  They are English teaching professionals that often become examiners to help their students more with the exam.  It is these professionals that you need to find to help you with your exam, and lots of them from the UK work here.

IELTS isn’t perfect, but no exam in the world is.  TOEFL is marked by AI, and AI is great at marking for grammar, but terrible at marking content.  You could have the greatest ideas in the world, but AI won’t give you any credit for them.  This is why IELTS is still the best language test in the world that is accessible to everyone, no matter what their level of English is.  It is an in-depth level test of your English; nothing else.

Conclusion

Don’t believe the rumours.  They are based on nothing but lies.  If you disagree, put your comments in the chat.  We are happy to talk about it. We, as examiners, have nothing to hide.