Every year, about 5 million students worldwide study abroad in all levels of education to gain international experience. 

However, the ridiculously high price of English language exams, particularly IELTS, for non-English native speakers are exploiting the opportunities for our younger generation to study oversea! They are forever trapped in a vicious poverty cycle.

What is IELTS basically?  

As an admission requirement for most schools, IELTS (International English Language Testing System) or other similar tests results are usually required by schools to evaluate an applicant's English level.

According to IELTS's official website, "it measures ability to communicate in English across all four language skills - listening, reading, writing and speaking". 

Under normal circumstances, a person whose mother tongue is not English is required to take IELTS and achieve a certain score (for example, 6.0 out of 9.0) to meet the school's language requirement.

It is not uncommon to see students who have taken IELTS for five or even ten times to hit a certain level of score. And these tests aren't cheap either.

How much is an IELTS exam?
For example, it costs HK$2,010 (roughly US$257) a time to take the IELTS exam. 

In Bangladesh, it's BDT17,000 (approximately US$201). Considering the minimum monthly wage of BDT5,300 in the country, taking the IELTS for one time costs an ordinary person about 3 months of salary.

How profitable is IELTS business?
IELTS is jointly owned by the Australia-listed education provider IDP, the British Council, and Cambridge English Language Assessment.

In financial year 2017, IDP's revenue from IELTS was AUD250.7 million (USD175.4 million), a 6% increase from the previous year, with a 41% profit margin. The average test fee was AUD275.6 (USD193).

What makes IELTS so profitable?

• 2-year validity of test result: IELTS results are only valid for 2 years. After that, a new test has to be taken before submitting the result.
• Cloudy marking process: Despite carefully-written marking scheme, you have no idea who the markers are and how they have marked. You won't have any substantial evidence about whether the marking of your work has been done by below-standard teachers or even outsourced to other developing counties for a higher profit margin.
• Monopoly: There are only a few big players in the world of language tests, with IELTS being the leader among commonwealth countries (such as New Zealand, Australia, etc). They can charge whatever they want to charge.

Our Plan

We want to give our next less-privileged generation a better opportunity to study oversea! Your support is eagerly needed to build a new English language test system that is more transparent and affordable for students worldwide.

• At least 30% Cheaper test fees
• Wider acceptance by schools worldwide
• Higher transparency in calculating test scores
• Longer time validity for test results

Don't ruin our younger talents!

Please do support our campaign and give them a brighter future from taking your first step.

Reference:
IDP Financial Report 2017
https://investors.idp.com/FormBuilder/_Resource/_module/v1AiEHYL20-_Rje11PzkYA/file/IDP_FY17_Annual_Report.pdf