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Carte blanche to fail candidates without written justification
IELTS’s examiners reserve the right to award band score zero for a so-called ‘perfect’
answer that contains all traits of a band score 9 response, if the examiner merely suspects
that an answer has been memorized (British Council 2017f, p. 2; 2017g, p. 2). The
examiner is not required to provide any evidence to the test-taker to justify their
subjective opinion and extreme action. IELTS reserve the right to cancel any test-takers
examination scores without providing written reasons to their fee-paying clients (British
Council, 2017a).
IELTS’s is a very high-stakes exam. This draconian policy has the potential for abuse by
an unconscionable rogue examiner who aims to maximize revenue earned at the local
branch office level. It can also be abused by rogue examiners who seek to discriminate
against a candidate because of factors such as the test-takers age, race, gender or religion.
(^)
Conclusion
Writing assessments is not easy. I argue that the numerous structural design flaws that
persist in IELTS’s subjective assessment rubrics are relatively easy to eradicate. IELTS
should eliminate multiple subjective criteria and switch to objective criteria. It should use
rubrics that clearly place an achievement in one band score matrix only. IELTS should
publish the internal copy of its assessment rubric. It should not allow its examiners carte
blanche to award a score of zero without justification for a high-stakes global exam.