Pearson just published its 2025 annual results. They indicate that PTE volumes were down 5% compared to the year before.
By my math, that puts PTE’s total volume at about 1.04 million for the year.
Category: PTE
A stark decline in the number of international students heading to Canada is one reason why test volumes are decreasing. The Toronto Star reports that 115, 470 students entered the country last year. That’s 61% less than the year before. I’ll post a link in the comments.
In recent years, a major part of Canada’s attractiveness as a study destination has been its immigration proposition: in just a handful of years an individual can progress from a short course of study to a post-graduation work permit and then permanent residence. But keep in mind that due to regulations that came into force back in November of 2024, it is usually necessary to take an English test at all three steps in this journey. As you can imagine, this has made Canada pretty important to testing firms.
Students heading to Canada have traditionally favored the IELTS. But Canadian study visa applications don’t come with a list of mandated English tests, so students are free to choose from a wide variety of options. My alma mater (a middling school on the east coast) accepts scores from eight different tests, for instance. Anecdotally, it seems like Pearson’s PTE and the Duolingo English Test have gained popularity among Canada-bound students in recent years. A recent IDP Education financial report highlighted on-shore testing in Canada as a bright spot in challenging times.
One fun wrinkle is that while university applications require scores from the IELTS Academic test (or some other academic-ish English test), the PGWP requires scores from the IELTS General test (or the CELPIP General test or the PTE Core). So even if your course of study was short enough that your original test score is still valid following your graduation, you will have to retest. Savvy timing could possibly enable people to use the same scores for PGWP and PR, though.
In conversation with Times Higher Education, Cambridge University Press & Assessment Press and Assessment chief Pamela Baxter notes that “[t]he increased use of poorly regulated tests does a disservice to students using them for university admission.”
This may be true. I’ve certainly seen some wacky decisions about which tests are accepted. It is worth noting (again and again and again) that some of the biggest challenges faced by higher-ed providers in recent months have been linked to the use of heavily regulated tests.
I’m referring, of course, to the IELTS test where nearly 63 thousand test takers received incorrect scores over the course of about two years. And to Pearson’s PTE test, where widespread cheating went unnoticed long enough for almost ten thousand test takers to receive fraudulent test scores. In both cases, higher-ed providers were left to deal with the reality of having accepted students who possibly lacked the English skills necessary to thrive in their academic lives.
I love the regulators like brothers, I really do. I even love the test makers. Having some regulations is much better than having no regulations. But ultimately score users need to remember that regulatory bodies can only do so much and only have so much value. Responsibility ultimately lies with the institutions themselves, and they must always take statements from test makers with a heaping grain of salt.
I really like this new “Scoring Information for Teachers and Partners” document from Pearson. It contains a ton of wonderful details about how the PTE test is scored. Included are detailed tables explaining how much weight each item has for each section, and for the overall score. This includes integrated items, which affect more than one section score.
The document also explains why the overall PTE score is not an average of the four section scores (which is weird, but I think I’m starting to get it).
There is also a good explanation of how score reviews work.
I would love to see more of this from test makers. It would be especially useful to learn how scores are determined on the new TOEFL, and how the test adapts to test takers as they work through it.
The “Pearson English Express Test” is now known as “PTE Express.”
I read in Pearson’s trading update that “Pearson Test of English (PTE) sales were flat” for the year. A result that is truly “flat” would actually be a pretty good result, considering that test volumes at all the big firms are down down down for obvious reasons.
The update also refers to “expected declines in PTE following volume strength ahead of test enhancements in Q3.” I guess that means people piled into the old PTE in order to avoid the challenge of preparing for new item types in the revised test.
A full annual report will be published next month. It will likely contain more specific figures.
Speaking of annual reports, the audit of ETS should be available any day now. Maybe tomorrow.
A few stray thoughts regarding the Pearson fine:
- Obviously, this situation demonstrates the importance of keeping an eye on student outcomes when it comes to linguistic fluency (however you define that) and pairing them with the language test scores each student submitted during the admissions process. Institutions which do this might be able to notice the existence of organized cheating rings even before test makers, who generally don’t have access to data regarding student outcomes. Indeed, it seems that this is how Pearson learned about the problem (at least in part).
- It could be time and resource intensive for higher-ed institutions to do the above. But at least they can do it. It is much harder for organizations outside the world of academia to track such outcomes. I’m not sure how, for example, a board that licenses physical therapists might go about it.
- Assessment literacy now includes security literacy. It is incumbent upon score users to understand the security practices and the technology used in every step of the testing process (including for at-home testing). When higher-ed staff talk to test makers they need to be able to ask the right questions. Sadly, there isn’t much useful documentation of this aspect of the testing process. So good luck with that, everyone.
- I’ve always been a big fan of in-house tests for all new arrivals, whether they be used as placement tests, for determining whether extra language classes are necessary… or some other purpose. At their most basic level, they can be used as a way to identify which third-party tests are working best for an institution… at least in terms of determining linguistic fluency.
- I know it’s a pain in the ass, but if you want to make the best decisions regarding which tests to accept, you really need to actually take the tests yourself. And demonstration versions don’t count.
- If the timeline in the Ofqual announcement is any indication, I guess we can expect some kind of report on the recent IELTS thing in mid-2028.
Pearson has been fined £2 million by Ofqual for what is being described as “serious breaches in 3 separate cases between 2019 and 2023 which collectively affected tens of thousands of students.”
This includes a £750,000 fine related to the PTE Academic Online test.
Regarding the PTE-related fine, Ofqual’s announcement says that “[i]n 2023, malpractice involved other people sitting the secure test on the student’s behalf, avoiding the remote invigilation safeguards Pearson had put in place. Although Pearson identified the incident and revoked 9910 results affected, it admitted it should have identified the malpractice sooner and reported it to Ofqual earlier than it did.” Elsewhere, Ofqual notes that “[a]n additional 2,906 results were either revoked or withheld identified by Pearson’s business-as-usual monitoring processes during this period”
It is further noted that “[o]n 1 December 2025, Pearson entered into a voluntary settlement agreement with Ofqual to resolve this investigation. Pearson made full admissions in relation to Ofqual’s allegations of non-compliance and has agreed to pay a penalty of £750,000”
In addition to reading the announcement, be sure to check out the “Notice of Monetary Penalty” document, which contains detailed descriptions of the problems that occurred and a detailed timeline of events.
As reported in this space, the PTE Academic online product was quietly discontinued around November or December of 2024.
I know I sound like a broken record, but one wonders how this will impact the ongoing HOELT tender.
The other two fines relate to the GCSE English language qualification and the new GCSE English language 2.0 qualification (a £750,000 fine) and the GCE A level in Chinese (a £505,000 fine). These are tests I am not particularly familiar with.
Between June 2021 and June 2022, IDP Education administered about 1,900,000 IELTS tests. During that same period, Pearson administered about 591,000 PTE tests.
Between June 2024 and June 2025 IDP administered about 1,293,800 IELTS tests (a 600k drop). During that same period, Pearson administered about 993,000 PTE tests (a 400k increase).
This according to the annual reports published by each firm.
Apples and oranges, I suppose. But one is left to wonder when the number of tests administered by Pearson will surpass the number administered by IDP education. One is also left wondering if Pearson (which seems to focus on a narrower range of markets) already does more tests in India than IDP.
(By my crude calculations, DET jumped from 494k to 684k in the same time frame)
Pearson’s Nine Month trading update describes the PTE as having “strong performance” in Q3. Dunno what that actually means, but there ya go.
I was happy to discover that Pearson has published updated print guides to the PTE Academic test (one for students, one for teachers). They cost $86 AUD a piece and only seem to be sold from Pearson’s Australian web store. But they do exist. Apparently.
I am still a big believer in print books because they can be stocked by libraries around the world. Libraries remain a major source of free test prep – the long reservation queues for prep books at many libraries speak to that.
I saw that Pearson has launched the new “Pearson English Express Test” in select markets. According to my notes, this launch is about one month earlier than expected.
The test may be available in my market. If so, I’ll do my best to take it in the weeks ahead. I gotta send my passport to the shop pretty soon, so that might slow me down a bit.
Pearson’s express test seems to represent an effort to compete in the same space that Duolingo currently has all to itself. It is a one-hour test, is remote-only and costs $70. I believe that scoring is mostly AI and that proctoring is asynchronous.
A short list of accepting schools is available here.
More on this test in the days ahead.
The UK Home Office has published a fifth request for information regarding the Home Office English Language Test (HOELT). This one is a shocker. It notes that “the Home Office is exploring a ‘Digital by Default’ service, with remote proctoring as the primary mode of delivery and physical test centres available where remote solutions are not feasible.”
This could explain the curiously low number of test centers mentioned in the fourth RFI, which is again listed as just 268 in 142 countries.
A Home Office choice to go with remote proctoring by default might favor a smaller test provider – like LANGUAGECERT, Duolingo or ETS – heretofore considered an underdog in the race to win the tender. All three of those providers are well known for offering robust remote-testing options to test takers around the world.
On the other hand, the IELTS partnership (widely considered a front-runner to win the HOELT tender) currently offers remote tests only in select markets, while Pearson (another favorite) pulled the plug on its remote options back in 2024 shortly after stories broke about widespread cheating on the at-home PTE Test.
Of course this doesn’t mean remote testing is a sure thing. But it is worth paying careful attention to the possibility.