University of Sydney: Human Trafficking Criminal wwww.ielts.agency 80
Failure without justification
IELTS reserve the right to award a score of zero to any candidate for any or all four language skills
taken in the same test. This reservation applies even in cases where the examinee’s answer is
ostensibly deserved of being awarded a perfect score of band 9 for content quality.
Cambridge Assessment research academic Chris Bell (2015) confirms that Cambridge use
“statistical malpractice detection” techniques to ‘detect’ cheating. This approach is akin to using
artificial intelligence software to prove a crime for a high-stakes test. As noted by Pell (2015, p.
34), “it is impossible to completely eliminate the highlighting of false positives”. In other words,
it is near-certain that Cambridge Assessment rely on statistical data to unfairly fail and extract
more revenue from multiple clients. One example of this absurd approach that Cambridge uses
is “Similarity of response patterns between two or more candidates” (Pell, 2015, p. 33).
There are numerous legitimate reasons that may explain why honest candidates may offer
identical responses such as multiple-choice selections during the reading test. For example, two
candidates who sit the same IELTS exam may produce identical or near-identical examination
responses because they are siblings who live together and prepared for the exam as study
partners using the same preparation resources. IELTS reserve the right to award these siblings a
score of zero, without justification, merely because they suspect that they cheated.