Continuing our roundup of IELTS news from 2024, we now look at the critical work of the IELTS research community
IELTS research
Our teams and partnerships continue to bring real-world solutions to the needs of English testing
IELTS teams have been pioneers in the global development of English Language Assessment. In fact, some of the team literally wrote the book(s) on the subject! (See, for example, the extensive work from Nick Saville and Barry O’Sullivan).
The future of English language testing
English language testing is a field that continues to evolve and develop.
In a recent submission to the journal, Language Testing, Tony Clark and Emma Bruce highlight how the field of English language testing stands to benefit immensely from Open Science principles, with IELTS researchers charting the course. By blending transparency with a steadfast commitment to security and fairness, they are reshaping how high-stakes assessments deliver value. This pioneering work enables stakeholders—from students to institutions—to achieve better outcomes through trusted, data-driven insights.
The impact of English language test choices for Universities
English language proficiency is one of the key conditions to entry for international students applying for a course in UK Higher Education.
To support universities in setting the standards that are needed, a cross-institutional research group with colleagues from the British Council, Cambridge University Press and Assessment, and the universities of Cambridge and Dundee was set up in 2024.
Preliminary results indicate that
- processes around test acceptance are not uniform across institutions
- there are often competing tensions within universities, for example, between recruitment and academics, as to which tests to accept and at what levels.
- 63% of academics said that they were Extremely or Somewhat dissatisfied with the range of tests that their university accepts
- However, 67% of those working in recruitment were Somewhat satisfied.
The project has identified 6 measures to support Higher Education Institutions; to help make decisions; understand what additional support international students may need on arrival. And ultimately to help students successfully settle into the English-speaking academic environment.
Insights into success factors at university
Recent research shows that language proficiency is an important contributing factor to international students' academic, social and emotional journey.
By assessing the practical language skills essential for studying, IELTS ensures that test takers are well-prepared to excel in their academic pursuits as well as to thrive socially.
Artificial Intelligence coupled with real-world intelligence
And obviously we can’t talk about evolution (in anything) in 2025 without talking about Artificial Intelligence! AI continues to shape our world, and our research teams continue to focus on the broad impact:
- identifying practical solutions,
- finding real-world implementations,
- tightly managing the ethical considerations
as we harness the power of the machines.
Here, Principal Research Manager for IELTS at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Dr Carla Pastorino-Campos, discusses balancing AI potential with test integrity in high-stakes language assessment.
Watch her insights on responsible technology integration and the key ethical considerations:
Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence, AI, and with good reason.
AI is a technology that has been around for a long time but lately you can see it around everywhere. This is the case also for English testing.
Researchers, teachers, students, universities, we're all looking into how we can harness the possibilities of this technology into our context. In our team we're particularly interested in understanding how we can use technologies, for example, to create automatically relevant and interesting content for our tests, or to make our tests more secure.
But as is the case for any new or developing technology we also need to consider the downsides when we're working with very high stake tests such as IELTS which can have a major impact in our candidates' lives if they get the score that they desire.
For example they may be able to go to the university of their dreams or they may be able to travel to the place where they've always dreamed of living.
For this reason we always care a lot about the quality, the reliability, the validity, and the fairness of our test. This is why we take what I call a cautiously curious approach to technology. We try to learn everything we can about how a technology works, and how we can use it to make our tests more interesting or more reliable or more valid. And then, we test the applications over and over again until we're sure we know everything we can know about the intended and unintended consequences of using the technology.
When it comes specifically to AI, I am particularly interested in the ethical concerns that may arise from using the technology. And I could talk about this for hours if you let me. So for this time that we have together I will talk about one particular concern, explainability.
One of the most important outstanding questions that we have at the moment is whether we can ask the technology to explain how it reaches its decisions. So, let's say that a machine tells us that a candidate got a six in a particular skill in IELTS.
Can we ask it to explain how it reached that decision?
This is something that we do with humans at the moment we ask them what kinds of features make a six six.
But can we do that with the machine?
The answer to this question at least for now is sometimes. It depends a little bit on the system itself, also to whom, which humans, the system is explaining its decisions to, and many other aspects of human computer interaction. But we're looking into this and we think it has a lot of potential.
How could we help you achieve more in 2025?
If your institution would like support defining the right English standards to achieve your desired outcomes, our teams are always happy to help. Please get in contact or have a look at our guide to IELTS scores for Universities.
