Increasing English Level Requirements for Immigration to Australia: 31% Reduction in Eligible Candidates
I've written about general residency and citizenship English language requirements to Australia here, as well as the average IELTS scores in recent years. Recently the Immigration Office announced a set of changes, and I was curious about how this might impact residency and citizenship applications.
The minimum requirements have gone up! From 6.0 --> 7.0 in the IELTS, for example, for those seeking visa pathways requiring Competent or Proficient English (these cover a huge number of PR and citizenship pathways). Luckily, the British Council publishes stats every year on IELTS performance, so we can get a rough shod estimate of how this is likely to affect eligibility.
62% of IELTS test takers achieve a 6.0 or higher. Only 43% achieve 7.0 or higher. Roughly a 62% --> 43% eligibility means a potential 31% reduction in residency or citizenship applications that meet this new bar.
Now there are quite a few assumptions to be made here for this estimate to be even remotely true, chief among them:
- IELTS publishes aggregated Academic and General stats, we're assuming performance across the 2 track similarly
- IELTS publishes an overall row for immigrants taking the test, but these immigrants may not be representative of those applying to Australia
- etc etc etc
Another announcement from the changes indicates a larger set of proficiency tests will be accepted:
- Cambridge C1 Advanced Test
- Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program General
- International English Language Testing System Academic, including One Skill Retake (OSR)
- International English Language Testing System General Training, including One Skill Retake (OSR)
- LANGUAGECERT Academic Test
- Michigan English Test, including Single Section Retake (SSR)
- Occupational English Test
- Pearson Test of English Academic
- Test of English as a Foreign Language internet-Based Test
Before it was just CAE, IELTS, PTE Academic, OET, and TOEFL iBT.