Those changes to the Student Direct Stream (SDS) are now in effect. The IELTS monopoly is broken, and students may now also use scores from the TOEFL, PTE, CAEL and CELPIP tests. This is very, very good for students. Monopolies, as we know, are bad.
I just noticed one other change, which is that students using IELTS scores are no longer required to achieve a score of 6.0 in each of the four skills. Now they only need to achieve an overall score of 6.0. That’s probably too low, but I guess it won’t really matter too much as few schools (other than the sketchy degree mills) will admit students with band scores below 6.0.
I also noticed that students submitting an IELTS score need 6.0, students submitting a TOEFL score need an overall score of 83. That seems a bit high. According to the conversion tables published by ETS, an IELTS score of 6.0 matches a TOEFL score of 60.
Similarly, students submitting a PTE score need an overall score of 60. But according to the conversion tables published by Pearson, an IELTS score of 6.0 matches a PTE score of 46.
Again, this probably doesn’t matter since accepting schools do a better (but not perfect) job at properly matching score requirements but I think it is worth noting.