International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is a standardized test, scored on a 9-band scale, to evaluate the English language proficiency of the aspiring candidates. The test evaluates a student’s skills and command across the important aspects of language: Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking.
IELTS is jointly owned and administered by the British Council, IDP Education, and Cambridge Assessment English.
The number of IELTS tests conducted grew to a record 3.5 million in 2018, up from 3 million tests in 2017. And thus, it is one of the leading authorities in sphere of international higher education and immigration.
IELTS is scored on a 9-band scale, with each score band corresponding to a defined competency in English language. Thus, the scores range from ‘band-1’ (non-user) to ‘band-9’ (expert user).
There is no concept of ‘fail’ or ‘pass’ in IELTS. But each institute has got a minimum score requirement which the candidate must fulfil in order to be eligible to get in.
Test takers receive a score band for each section of the test – Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking. And the Overall Band Score is produced as an average of the individual scores of each section.
The Overall Band Score, if it ends in a decimal, gets rounded up to the nearest half or whole band score. To give an example if your average band score comes out to be 7.25 then it would be rounded off to 7.5 as the Overall Band Score. Similarly, if the average score is 6.75 then it would be rounded off as 7.0 Overall Score.
Have another Question?
Get Answers from Experts within 12 hours