Category: China

Second Student Jailed in HK for TOEFL Cheating

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A second student in Hong Kong has been handed a three-month prison sentence for hiring a body double to take the TOEFL test (at a test center) on their behalf.

According to the South China Morning Post, the test taker scheduled a test at a center in Cambodia, but “[o]n the day of the test, the student claimed to be unwell, then hired a fraudster outside the examination hall to take the exam in her place.”

Reporting in the Standard confirms this detail, noting that “[s]he claimed she fell ill on the test day and was approached by an unknown person who offered to take the test for US$300.”

The deception was detected only when the student’s university later “questioned the veracity of the result.”

Jeepers.  Some readers might still be under the impression that test-center cheating is a sophisticated and tricky thing.   But perhaps it is time for a rethink, as apparently would-be proxy test takers can be found milling about outside test centers looking for clients.  And they work cheap.

Regular readers know that test takers who want to cheat often travel across borders to test centers where they think their schemes will be easier to pull off.  In this way, a fraudulent test result can be combined with a trip to the beach, or with the consumption of mixed drinks served at very low prices.

This sort of “exam tourism” is a phenomenon most often associated with paper-based testing, but as you can see computer-delivered testing is vulnerable as well.

Lingnan Student Cheats on TOEFL

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According to an article in The Standard, a Lingnan University student has pleaded guilty to cheating on the TOEFL test. The student, aged 22, is out on bail while awaiting sentencing.

Says the article:  “After failing four English tests, Huang traveled to Cambodia in May 2024 to sit the TOEFL exam. The court heard that she then arranged for another person to take the test on her behalf for US$300 after becoming ill on the exam day.”

In this case, the deception was noticed only after the university received an official TOEFL score report.  The university questioned the cheater and later contacted ETS, which confirmed that the deception had occurred.

]Why did ETS fail to notice this before being contacted by the score user?  That is unknown.

Why did the cheater go all the way to Cambodia to commit this fraud?  That is also unknown.

Is the test center in question particularly crappy?  Could be.

Body double fraud has been going on for longer than I’ve been alive.  Apparently, it is quite hard to stop.  Indeed, the final paragraph of the article notes that some other dude is set to be sentenced today for the same crime.

As I mentioned here a few days ago, people are cheating on at-home tests and people are cheating on on-site tests.  There is quite a lot of cheating.  Cheating on English tests.  Cheating on accreditation tests. So much cheating. I’ve been cheating on my diet non-stop since landing in Cairo 12 days ago.

Before declaring on-site tests to be a sort of gold standard, we could ask test makers what they are doing to fight this kind of fraud, beyond just looking really closely at test taker ID.

Cost of Taking IELTS in China to Drop

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The cost of taking the IELTS in China will drop by 180 RMB in a few weeks.   That’s about $25 USD.  After the drop it will cost 1990 RMB to take the test (about $280 USD).  It also seems that the UKVI version will have the same price as the standard version (a drop of 230 RMB).  Cancellation and change fees will also be lowered.

It is unclear if this is an effort by the British Council to make their product a bit more attractive as the TOEFL test kicks off a high-profile renewal process, an effort by the NEEA to make the test more consumer friendly, an impending IDP launch, or something else entirely.

Let me know if you see any price changes in your market. Here in Korea, the price was hiked in the summer.

(FYI: It currently costs 2100 RMB to take the TOEFL in China, which is about $295 USD)

TOEFL Experience Days in China

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ETS recently hosted a paid of big “TOEFL iBT Experience Day” events in Beijing and Shanghai. Participants in each received a booklet containing three official practice tests matching the new format of the test.  That seems to have been a print-only thing so you’ll have to ask a friend in China to mail you a copy (speaking of which, anyone want to send along a copy to add to my collection of testing ephemera?) but I’ll let you know if a digital version is distributed.

I know I sound like a broken record, but here we have more evidence of a renewed focus on the key Chinese market after several years of faffing about somewhat inefficiently in other markets.

Speaking of which, I noticed that ETS China has a new President/General Manager (brought on in February).  While the previous manager came to ETS from New Oriental with a background in education, the current manager has an exclusively business-oriented background.  That meshes well with the new look ETS of 2025.

Official TOEFL AI Platform

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It is worth taking a moment to peer at the Official TOEFL AI Learning platform recently launched by ETS in China.  It looks like TOEFL TestReady on steroids, and should be considered a pretty big deal.

Test takers have spotted advertisements for it at the big TOEFL test center in Shanghai.  I’ll post a picture of one of those below. Note that purchase and registration requires a Chinese phone number. This isn’t meant for the rest of the world.

The price tag is an eye-watering 10,888 RMB (about $1500 USD).  But given that spend on TOEFL prep in China can sometimes be quite high (and often comes from the Bank of Mom and Dad) I think it will be a pretty lucrative product for ETS.  Also note that a lot of test takers spend two or three years preparing for this test.

An additional perk is that users of the platform can plug in their test reservation number and get their TOEFL scores a few days early.

What’s fascinating to me is that this is one of the biggest additions to the TOEFL portfolio in decades, and you’ll find not one mumbling word about it here on LinkedIn, on the ETS website or on the usual social media channels.  I’m not sure anyone outside of the PRC even knows about it.  This isn’t a complaint, of course.  As regular readers know, I’ve been fascinated by the veil which separates test prep pros inside China and those outside of China.

I’m also vaguely curious how this platform will affect long-standing licensing deals which have sent dozens of retired test forms (along with SpeechRater and e-rater grading) to China-based partners like New Oriental.  Will they be continued now that ETS is operating a competing platform?  A decision to forego those deals and instead funnel all Chinese learners into a self-operated platform could be super-duper lucrative.

In any case, this all seems to be part of the strategic pivot back to the Chinese market which I’ve written about again and again.

 

How Testing Works in China (NEEA, etc)

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The Oxford Test of English will soon be offered at test centers in China and Thailand. Congratulations to the team at OUP! That’s one step closer to my backyard!

China is an interesting case. Regular readers know that the two big English tests in that country – IELTS and TOEFL – are administered in partnership with the NEEA, a public agency associated with the Chinese Ministry of Education.  Test registration is done through an NEEA portal. The NEEA collects registration fees and later passes them along to ETS and the British Council… after pocketing an unspecified amount.

This is probably good for test takers as the NEEA is known for blocking price hikes and upselling. It also mandates that registration fees be charged in RMB. It probably isn’t great for testing firms, as the NEEA is known for blocking price hikes and upselling. It also mandates that registration fees be charged in RMB.

Not all language tests are required to operate in partnership with the NEEA. This is because there are two types of language tests in the eyes of the Chinese regime – we might translate them as “educational tests” and “commercial language proficiency exams.” The former must be administered in partnership with the NEEA, while the latter can be administered with any local partner.

The biggest English test to operate without NEEA partnership is the PTE. Pearson partners with an on-shore company called Beijing Ensi (d/b/a Pearson VUE China).

In the case of Oxford, that partner will be a group called GEC.

A funny case is that of Prometric. They run the CELPIP with local partners, but run the CAEL with the NEEA. Which makes sense, as the CAEL is used for educational purposes, while the CELPIP is not.

There is a point to all of this. Anyone who cares enough to still be reading already knows that the IELTS test is run in China through a partnership between the British Council and the NEEA. IDP Education is not involved, but traditionally the British Council paid them a per-test royalty as a sort of booby prize in recognition of their partial ownership of IELTS.

Last year, IDP gave up that royalty and began administering the IELTS themselves. It is my understanding that their strategy was to brand themselves as a provider of a commercial language proficiency exam. This was done with an unnamed local partner referred to by CEO Tennealle O’Shannessy as “a respected professional examination service provider.” Someone once told me the name of that partner, but I’ve long forgotten. I could look it up, if anyone cares.

That went well for a few months. But by December, testing had ceased. IDP is now in negotiations to resume testing. I don’t know how those negotiations are going.

I’ve always wondered how Pearson managed to skirt the NEEA requirement. I know that it is used for both educational and non-educational purposes.  Maybe that’s enough. But so are the IELTS and TOEFL tests, to some extent.  And, surely, they would like to be free of the NEEA.

THE on China Trends

Posted on by TOEFL Resources

Interesting article in Times Higher Education this morning by Sabrina Y. Wang, who is involved in test preparation in China.  She notes:

“June and July used to be the beginning of the busiest time of the year, leading up to the IELTS and TOEFL exam season from September to December, as students submit their applications to study abroad. However, in stark contrast to previous years, my education company has this summer received only one inquiry about IELTS preparation.

Nor is this an isolated case. Competitors from other training centres and university admission agencies are also complaining of having very few enquiries compared with the same period last year.”

Wang talks about how Chinese students – across various categories – are considering options other than studying in the USA and UK.  She points out that the reasons are often economic. Basically, the middle class is feeling the pinch.

That’s all somewhat outside my wheelhouse, but the stuff about tests is interesting.  A few things are worth pointing out:

  1. China is way less competitive than other markets when it comes to tests. IELTS Official and TOEFL still dominate.  If insiders are reporting a lack of interest in those tests, the whole English testing thing might be in trouble.  It isn’t like everyone is piling into the PTE and DET.
  2. Interestingly, the big TOEFL relaunch appears to include a renewed focus on the Chinese market.  ETS from, say, 2023 to early 2025 seemed hyper-focused on the Indian market.  Those efforts may have produced negligible (or possibly negative) returns.  It almost feels like that work has been put on the backburner in order to rebuild things in China.  If this article is any indication, that looks like a very smart idea.
  3. As far as I can tell, IDP Education Ltd is still plugging away at gaining regulatory approval to begin administering the IELTS in China (alongside the British Council).

Additional Details on TOEFL iBT 2026 Changes

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A few days ago, ETS briefed New Oriental on the upcoming changes to the TOEFL iBT test.  Regular readers will know that New Oriental is one of the largest test prep firms in China and a longtime partner of ETS.

You can read the summary on QQ here, but a few things are worth mentioning here for the sake of emphasis.  According to New Oriental’s summary:

  1. As we already know, the reading section will be adaptive.  There will be two stages.  The first will be a calibration stage that is the same difficulty level for everyone.  The second will be an “easy” stage or a “hard” stage depending on the test taker’s performance in the first one.  The calibration stage in the reading section will contain multiple short passages rather than a single long reading passage like in the current iteration of the test.  Some of these shorter passages will resemble excerpts from textbooks like the passages currently on the test, but others will come from “sources like newspapers, magazines and websites.”  The second stage will contain the same question types as the first.
  2. The listening section will also be adaptive, with two stages. The listening section will continue to include academic lectures and teacher-student conversations.  On top of this, it will include “peer to peer conversations” focusing on scenarios such as group work.
  3. The speaking and writing sections will not be adaptive.  They will be scored by both humans and AI, as is currently the case.
  4. An e-mail writing task will be added to the writing section.  The academic discussion task will be retained.  It is not stated whether or not the integrated writing task will also be retained.
  5. A virtual interview question will be added to the speaking section.  This appears to be similar to the five-question interview currently included in the TOEFL Essentials Test (5 short questions on the same topic, 30 seconds to speak each time).  It is not stated whether or not the speaking questions currently on the TOEFL iBT will be removed or modified to make room for this.
  6. Starting January 21, score reports will include both the 1-120 traditional TOEFL score and a new 1-6 score linked to the CEFR.  It appears that both scores will be included on score reports for at least two years.
  7. The time it takes to complete the test will remain about the same (roughly two hours).

A few specific dates were mentioned by New Oriental:  practice tests will be available July 7 of this year and content changes will go live on January 21 of next year.

IDP Education Shares Tumble 48%. Plus: News on HOELT and IDP IELTS China

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IDP Education’s share price plummeted 48% today after a disappointing update from the testing and student placement firm.  Shares are down 66% for the year, so far.  They are currently trading at $3.88, which is the lowest they’ve been since December of 2016

According to the update, in FY2025 student placement volumes are expected to decrease 28 to 30 percent compared to FY2024.  Testing volumes (IELTS) are expected to decrease 18 to 20 percent.

The update notes that IDP “has a focused roadmap of digital and AI enabled product development across Student Placement and Language Testing that will underpin long-term volume and revenue growth, margin expansion and shareholder returns.”

On a call with investors, a few noteworthy topics were raised.

Regarding China, IDP notes: “We continue to progress our entry of IDP IELTS into China, are confident in the long term business case, continue to work constructively with the Chinese government and will update the market as appropriate as we continue to work towards our full IELTS opening in China.”

When pushed for a date when testing might begin, IDP didn’t provide one. They noted that the government there has taken an “encouraging view” of IDP’s entry into the country, but that the regulatory process has “slowed.”

Regarding bright spots for IELTS, on-shore testing in Canada was identified (due to testing for PR) as well as increased domestic usage in Asia (probably Vietnam, though it was not specifically named).

Regarding the HOELT test, it was indicated that the IELTS partners will apply for the tender as a partnership (rather than, say, individually). It was also confirmed that the HOELT will only be for work and migration visas (not student visas). The current concession, though, has been extended for another 12 months.

ETS Event in China

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ETS is hosting an event next month in Shanghai that may include announcements regarding major upgrades to the TOEFL program. Or maybe some other core ETS product.  Says ETS China (on LinkedIn):

Under the theme “Empowering with Expertise, Thriving Together,” we’ll unveil major upgrades to ETS’s core products and services and introduce new strategic initiatives for the Chinese market.

It could be a nothingburger, but note that the major changes to the TOEFL were unveiled at a ceremony in China back in 2023.

If anyone reading this attends, do send me a summary of the key points.  

 

Latest on IDP IELTS in China

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IDP Education’s investor call today touched on their move to administering the IELTS test in China.  That’s a topic that has garnered quite a lot of interest over the past few months.  As you know, IDP administered IELTS tests there in November and December… and then stopped.

Around  the 26:00 mark, CEO Tennealle O’Shannessy said:

“We made good progress in positioning ourselves in the China market with IELTS.  IDP has established a strong cooperative relationship with a respected professional examination service provider in China.  And in half-one we conducted IELTS pilot tests in November and December which performed strongly and received positive customer feedback and endorsement.  We will continue with preparations for scaling the offering from an operations, technology and regulatory perspective.  Currently, the Chinese Ministry of Education is in the process of approving the official expanded entry of IDP IELTS into the Chinese market.”

During the Q and A section there was some related bafflegab starting around 37:00, and towards the end of it O’Shannessy noted that:

“We continue to engage with the Chinese government who are really pleasingly taking a very encouraging view of our expansion into China.”

And:

“The long term business case continues to be very attractive, however what we would say is the regulatory processes associated with the approval for an official launch have slowed our launch and ramp-up plans to some degree… but we remain confident in the long term market opportunity.”

Further discussion around 42:00, referred to some “short term delays” while waiting for approval from the Chinese authorities, though O’Shannessy again stated that the longer term plan still holds up.  She is hopeful that these issues will be “worked through” in the “the next couple of months.”

These comments line up with popular speculation that regulatory hurdles have impacted IDP’s entry into the market. But test takers and investors alike will be happy to hear that they may soon be handled.

(the transcriptions are my own… forgive any errors)

What’s up with IDP IELTS in China?

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Does anyone know what’s up with IDP IELTS China?  Students seeking to book an IELTS test in China are still seeing the “Registration system maintenance in progress” error that has been displayed for several weeks.  And, as far as I can tell, test dates for 2025 have never been open for booking.  That means, I guess, that no one is currently taking the test through IDP in China;  their entry into the market appears to be paused for the time being.

Some have suggested that this could be due to regulatory hurdles.  If that is the case, I imagine that a plan-B exists, and we’ll hear about it sometime in 2025.  As has been reported by a few outlets, IDP recently canceled its lucrative agreement to collect royalties on administrations of the test done by the British Council.  I’m certain they wouldn’t have given up that source of income without a firm plan to permanently enter the market.

With that said, it is worth noting that the launch of IDP IELTS in China has been somewhat peculiar.  It happened without much fanfare. It was mentioned in the most recent shareholder’s call and I blogged about it at that time. The PIE News picked up the story a bit later, and that was about it.  Most Chinese students only learned about the development after the Chinese blogosphere reported on the PIE’s report.

Update:  This was touched on in IDP’s most recent financial report.  They are working on starting again.