Who marks the IELTS test?

IELTS is marked in two different ways, because it tests in two different ways. Listening and Reading have right and wrong answers. Writing and Speaking need a trained person to judge them.

Listening and Reading

IELTS Australia states that your answers are either correct or incorrect, so the marking is different from Speaking and Writing. You receive one mark for each correct answer, and the total number of marks determines your band score. Each of the two tests has 40 questions, and the mark out of 40 is converted to the 9-band scale, in whole or half bands.

IELTS’s pages do not say whether the checking is done by trained markers, by a system, or by a mix, and they do not say whether it differs between paper and computer. This page does not fill that gap, because a plausible explanation is not an official one. If it matters to you, your test centre is the place to ask.

Writing and Speaking

IELTS.org states that Writing and Speaking are assessed by examiners, and that each test centre is responsible for recruiting and training its own pool of examiners. Writing is assessed on task achievement or response, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. IELTS Australia states that a minimum of two examiners will mark your Writing test, sometimes three or four.

Speaking is assessed on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. The separate answer on who marks the IELTS Speaking test covers that section in detail.

How examiners are trained and monitored

IELTS.org lists the requirements: an undergraduate degree or equivalent, a TEFL or TESOL qualification and 3 to 5 years of teaching experience. Applicants are interviewed and must be approved by a qualified Examiner Trainer. IDP describes standardised training by an experienced examiner trainer, where candidates mark a series of tests consistently and accurately, and says examiners are re-certified every two years.

IELTS.org states that every test is assessed by qualified examiners who undergo rigorous training and continuous monitoring, and that selected results are marked twice so that scoring is reliable and consistent wherever you take the test.

What is not published

IELTS’s pages do not describe the monitoring in detail, and do not say how the choice of results for second marking is made. If you doubt a result, see can you get your Speaking score re-marked.