How is the PTE Academic score calculated?

Pearson announced two new speaking tasks, Respond to a Situation and Summarize Group Discussion, taking effect from 7 August 2025. The original 20 question types and their timings stayed the same, giving 22 types in total, and the Score Guide says a test has 65 to 75 questions. Pearson's scoring overview page still says 20 types; the Score Guide is the newer source.

The scoring change is double marking. Content in seven types (Describe Image, Retell Lecture, Respond to a Situation, Summarize Group Discussion, Summarize Written Text, Write Essay and Summarize Spoken Text) is scored by AI and by a human expert. If they disagree, a second human decides. Write Essay also gets human review of development, structure and coherence and of general linguistic range. Pearson's 2025 changes FAQ says humans never score pronunciation or oral fluency, raters see only the response, and the Score Report format, price and two-day results did not change.

Integrated questions count towards two skills at once, so a weak Repeat Sentence hurts both listening and speaking. The table is from the Score Guide's scoring criteria for Part 1 (about 76–84 minutes).

Reading (five types) and Listening (eight types) award points per correct item, and Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers and Highlight Incorrect Words deduct a point for each wrong choice, with a minimum of zero. In Listening, Summarize Spoken Text and Write from Dictation also count towards writing, while Highlight Correct Summary and Highlight Incorrect Words also count towards reading.

Some items are right or wrong for one point. Others use partial credit across traits such as content, form, pronunciation, oral fluency, grammar and vocabulary. Content and form act as gates: a zero on either means zero for the whole response. The Score Guide's examples are an essay on a different topic, an essay under 120 words, and answers built from memorised material, which count as irrelevant. In Describe Image, content is scored first, and only a response that clears it is then scored for pronunciation and fluency.

Pearson's explainer on the overall score (September 2026) says the overall takes account of question scores, question difficulty and question weighting across the whole test, so averaging your four skill scores will usually not reproduce it. Pearson's score bands put 76–84 at C1 and 85–90 at C2 on the CEFR.