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PTE Academic has three sections: speaking and writing; reading; listening. Within these sections there are twenty different questions types and a significant number of those are testing skills in more than one way looking at the test taker’s ability to exercise skills in unison. For example, a candidate listens to an authentic online lecture making notes while they are listening and the exam task itself requires a verbal summary of what they have just heard as they would in a tutorial or seminar. This format is similar in its approach to the TOEFL iBT but is slightly different to IELTS.

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Emma Stubbs, Vice President of university relations for PTE Academic has been given the task of building recognition for this exam amongst universities and colleges in the UK and Ireland. She explains why this feature enables institutions to make more informed admissions decisions: “The reason we’ve gone down this route is that we feel it’s more representative of the way that language is used in a real life student context. Integrated skills contribute to the authenticity and therefore the predictive ability of the test.” In essence, results that can be trusted.

Admissions tutors receive three different types of score report from PTE Academic. The first gives an overall English language ability of the test taker, the second offers a breakdown of scores for each section and a third set demonstrates the candidate’s level of ‘Enabling Skills’ including grammar, oral fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and written discourse. This level of detail in a score report is certainly unique to PTE Academic.

Pearson are delivering their test through sister company Pearson Vue who provide computer-based tests through a network of test centres in over 165 countries all over the world, something that Emma believes is to their advantage: “Because we’re delivering it through Person Vue, I think that means we have a bit more flexibility in terms of being able to meet market demand and one of our goals is that essentially, if there is demand for this test then there is availability.”

During the launch period, PTE Academic will be available in 36 territories including China, India, the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the UK, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Canada. Emma is confident that it won’t be long before PTE will be available in more locations: “Given the quite rapid uptake I think the rate of recognition should actually increase. There’s nothing to suggest that wouldn’t happen.”

Where Pearson might not yet be as widely available as TOEFL or IELTS, they are ahead of the competition when it comes to speed of results. Where IELTS and TOEFL promise to have results online after 13 or 15 days respectively, PTE Academic releases scores in just five business days. Through Pearson’s fully online system, booking, paying, taking the test and obtaining results can theoretically be done in just over a week, providing there is space available.

The reason for Pearson’s quick turnaround of results is that the test eliminates any human involvement in marking it. Using their own patented automated scoring technology, Pearson claim their test produces reliable and standardised grading that institutions can rely upon to make recruitment decisions. The idea behind this is objectivity, an issue widely interpreted by the testing organisations.

Pearson uphold that their technology is sophisticated enough to yield scores that are comparable to human raters but with the precision, consistency and neutrality of a machine. Emma explains that this method of scoring is designed to give students and institutions confidence that the same score would be earned wherever it had been administered: “From an accuracy perspective the fact that we’re using our own automated scoring technology means that we’re taking away any subjective bias in assessment of the student’s responses.”

Institutions can access results via the PTE Academic score report website to verify they are genuine and accurate. Admissions tutors can listen to a 30 second speech sample captured from the candidate at the beginning of the test. Whilst the voice print is not graded, institutions can use this short statement about the test taker for additional identification purposes.

In terms of scores, these are all reported on the same scale from 10 (low) to 90 (high). Emma says that the range of scores that universities will accept as a minimum pass rate could be anywhere between 50 and 76. To help universities make comparisons, Pearson have released a concordance document which makes equivalences between other tests on the market and PTE Academic: “It is not designed to be an easy test of English and as such the majority of questions in the test have been selected at a specific level, a level that we believe is suitable for direct academic entry so it is quite challenging.”

The need for a challenging test that helps universities determine the true level of a candidate’s English language ability is not up for debate but the questions is whether PTE Academic is the test to do it. Getting institutions to accept PTE Academic as their preferred test will take time but Emma is confident that acknowledgement will come: “We’ve received incredibly positive feedback from institutions. At the moment we’re recognised for just under 1,000 programmes across 18 different countries but it’s changing daily and we expect that number will continue to increase as we move forward.”