What holds IELTS and PTE scores back: the data from 121,000 attempts

IELTS writing: the criterion that caps half of all essays

Each essay is scored on the four official criteria. For every essay we took the lowest of the four, because the overall band is an average and the lowest criterion is what a candidate can most cheaply raise. Task response (task achievement for Task 1) was the lowest criterion in 420 of 857 essays. Grammar, which most candidates believe is their problem, was the lowest in only 16%.

The mean band across all scored essays was 5.7. 32% of essays reached 6.5 or above and 14.5% reached 7.0 or above, the band most postgraduate offers require.

A quarter of Task 2 essays are too short, and length tracks band

Of 268 Task 2 essays, 68 (25%) were under the 250-word minimum, which is penalised before content is even considered. Length rises with band: essays scored 5.0 or below averaged 225 words, essays scored 7.0 or above averaged 292. The band 7 essays were not padded; they developed each idea with an explanation and an example, which is what task response rewards. The practical target is 270 to 300 words.

IELTS speaking: fluency, not pronunciation, is the ceiling

Of 670 speaking attempts with all four criteria scored, fluency and coherence was the lowest criterion in 363 (54%) and the highest in only a third. Pronunciation, the criterion most candidates worry about, was the lowest in just 8% and had the highest mean band at 5.3. Grammatical range was the second most common ceiling at 23%. The mean overall band was 4.9 and 7.9% of attempts reached 6.5 or above.

In practice this means the fastest speaking gain for most candidates is not accent work but eliminating restarts, filler and long pauses, which is what the speaking 6 to 7 guide drills.

PTE: the hardest question types by first-attempt score

Across 121,093 scored attempts, the lowest mean scores are on the integrated tasks that need a summary in the candidate's own words. Summarize Spoken Text averaged 51.5% of available marks and Summarize Written Text 63.5%. Reorder Paragraphs (63.4%) and Repeat Sentence (63.7%) were next. Write from Dictation looks easy at 79.7% but only 30.6% of attempts earned full marks: partial credit hides that most candidates drop a word or two per sentence.

PTE: repeating the same item teaches the item, not the skill

We matched first and second attempts by the same candidate on the same question. Reading and listening items jump 30 to 40 points on the second attempt: Reorder Paragraphs from 34.5% to 74.8%, Reading Fill in the Blanks from 46.7% to 84.5%, listening MCQ from 16.9% to 83.1%. That is memory of the answer, not improvement. Speaking items barely move: Read Aloud 67.0% to 71.4%, Describe Image 77.6% to 80.6%, Repeat Sentence 58.5% to 68.9%. The lesson is to repeat speaking and dictation items, where the second attempt reflects real skill, and to use fresh items for reading.

Method and limits

All scores are from BandLadder's AI scoring on practice attempts, not official IELTS or Pearson results, and practice attempts skew below exam-day performance because candidates try tasks before they are ready. IELTS essays and speaking tests scored below 3.0 (blank, off-topic or cut short) were excluded, leaving 857 essays from 971 and 670 speaking tests from 803. PTE figures cover every scored attempt from 31 December 2025 to 22 September 2026 for question types with at least 200 attempts; second-attempt pairs are the same candidate on the same item, types with at least 100 pairs. Country is not yet recorded for most accounts, so no breakdown by country is offered; it will be added when the sample allows. Figures may be quoted with attribution to BandLadder and a link to this page.

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