I was quoted in this PIE News article by Polly Nash as saying that the arrangement between IDP and the NEEA in China is more seamless than what ETS and the British Council have. That might be an understatement.
Test prep people who don’t work with students in China may not realize that Chinese test takers don’t register for tests directly with the test makers like they do in the rest of the world. Instead, they are offloaded to NEEA websites. That organization handles the registration and payment.
It is worth mentioning at this time that the NEEA is the National Education Examinations Authority, which is an agency under the purview of the Chinese Ministry of Education. They also handle other foreign tests like the GRE, GMAT and CELPIP.
I will forever be curious as to why this arrangement exists. I assume that this was the only way that foreign tests were allowed to enter the lucrative Chinese market. Surely, in 2024, the test makers would prefer to handle registration themselves. I could be wrong.
To be honest, this arrangement doesn’t really seem to bother test takers in the country who I talk to. They tell me that they are used to it. Perhaps there are advantages. Prices in China are set in RMB and are not hiked as often as in other markets. And I’m sure they don’t get nearly as many payment errors as people in the rest of the world get.
That said, the arrangement means that things like UX depend on the best practices of the bureaucracy, and it limits upselling and other things that add value to test registration.
Needless to say, I’ll likely be forever curious about how IDP was able to dodge this requirement. For what it’s worth, Pearson seems to have also dodged it with the PTE.
Update: Registration for the IELTS via IDP has been halted since December of 2024. Maybe they didn’t figure out how to deal with the NEEA.