IELTS For Teachers

Electronic IELTS results to Receiving Organisations

Overview

IELTS results are increasingly high-stakes as the test grows in

recognition and candidature. Sophisticated features have been built
in to the IELTS Test Report Form (TRF) to maintain the security of
test results. To provide a further safeguard, in 2002 IELTS
developed an on-line service, which enables those recognising IELTS
to be totally confident about the authenticity of any TRF with which
they are presented (www.ielts.org). The service has been in
operation for the last 3 years and has proved to be a great success
with most major universities and immigration departments in the
English-speaking world having signed up. The initial success of the
verification service was built upon with the addition of candidate
photos in September 2003, ensuring that verification was even more
convenient and reliable for verifiers.

In response to requests from key stakeholders, IELTS will be

introducing an electronic bulk download facility where organisations
will be able to download IELTS results for all IELTS candidates who
want the organisation to recognise their result. This new feature will
be available in early 2006.

A number of key questions relating to the new development are

answered below:

What are the benefits of this facility?

Many stakeholders have suggested that it would make their

administrative procedures more efficient if verified results could be
downloaded in bulk and loaded into their own data systems.

How does the electronic download facility work?

Candidates registering for IELTS will continue to have the option to

specify up to 5 organisations to whom their IELTS test scores should
be sent. This information will be recorded by the centre in their local
administration systems and subsequently uploaded to the central
IELTS processing systems and websites. Users from organisations
which have registered for the electronic download facility will be able
to login to the existing IELTS TRF verification service and navigate to
a new section from which the downloads can be initiated. It will be
possible to select date parameters for the download and the file type,
either CSV or XML.

Do I have to pay for this service?

The bulk electronic download service and the existing IELTS TRF
verification service are provided to appropriate organisations free of
charge.

What do I need to do get access to the new service?

• If you are an existing user of the IELTS TRF verification

service:
We will contact the administrator for your organisation later in
2005 and ask whether or not you wish to have access to the
new bulk download service. Once your organisation has signed
up it will appear in the list of organisations available to Centre
Administrators.
• If you are a new user of the IELTS TRF verification service:
If you would like to access either the IELTS TRF verification site
or the bulk download facility, then please refer to the IELTS
website for further information on registration.

What is the impact of registering for the bulk download service?

Once you have registered for the service and you have received
confirmation from IELTS administration, all users at your institution
will be able to access an additional area of the web site, which will
allow them to download candidate results. You will not receive hard
copy TRFs for these candidates. However to start with you may
receive some TRFs as hard copy and some results electronically, as
all centres switch over to the new system.

Unfortunately, at the moment, once an institution has subscribed to

the bulk download service it is not possible to unsubscribe.
Candidate preferences in terms of who receives their results are
captured when the candidate registers for IELTS and allowing
institutions to withdraw from the service would mean that some
candidates may not be able to get their TRFs verified easily.

Which university student administration packages will be

supported?

To support users in universities IELTS is developing interfaces, which

will allow universities to import IELTS scores directly into the most
popular student administration packages without the need for any
kind of bespoke development.

Initially an interface is being developed to allow IELTS scores to be

imported into PeopleSoft Campus Solutions versions 8.0 and 8.9.
PeopleSoft users will be able to download PeopleSoft projects, which
can then be applied to their instance of PeopleSoft Campus
Solutions. IELTS scores can then be imported, in the same way as
other test scores, without any further bespoke development. Full
supporting documentation explaining how to apply the projects will be
provided.

It is anticipated that similar support will be available for the Banner

Student Administration System in 2006.

Users of other student administration systems or those with bespoke

systems cannot be supported at this time although organisations are
free to develop their own import routines.

When will the electronic download functionality be available?

The electronic download functionality will be available in early 2006.

What is the file format for the download?

The file is available to download in either CSV or XML file formats.

Please note that the photo is only available in the XML format and is
not transferred as part of the CSV download.

Currently the hard copy TRF shows the Writing and Speaking as an
integer but the Listening and Reading and Overall band score to
1decimal place. The download formats output each of the 4 skills
and the overall band score all to 1 decimal place for the XML format
and to one decimal place in the CSV format where the band score is
not an integer.

The following table defines the XML file format:

Output XML Format

DownloadID ( attribute ) Integer - max 10 digits

PartNo (attribute) Integer – max 10 digits
OrganisationID (attribute ) Integer - max 10 digits
StartDate "CCYY-MM-DD"
e.g. 2004-06-28
EndDate "CCYY-MM-DD"
Candidate.CentreNumber String – 5 chars
Candidate.CandidateNumber Integer – max 6 digits
Candidate.CandidateID String – max 20 chars
Candidate.TestDate "CCYY-MM-DD"
Candidate.ModuleType “A” or “G”
Candidate.FamilyName String – max 50 chars
Candidate.FirstName String – max 50 chars
Candidate.DateOfBirth "CCYY-MM-DD"
Candidate.Gender M, F or U
Candidate.Score.ListeningTest Decimal – max 999.9
Candidate.Score.ReadingTest Decimal – max 999.9
Candidate.Score.WritingTest Decimal – max 999.9
Candidate.Score.SpeakingTest Decimal – max 999.9
Candidate.Score.Overall Decimal – max 999.9
Candidate.TRFNumber String – max 20 chars
Candidate.Photo Base64 encoded binary image –
unbounded size but probably
around 8K in size per candidate

The following table defines the CSV file format. The order of the data
items will correspond to the layout of the CSV file.
CSV Field Format

DownloadID Integer - max 10 digits

CSV Field Format

PartNo Integer - max 10 digits

Startdate "DD/MM/CCYY"
e.g. 28/06/2004
Enddate "DD/MM/CCYY"
CentreNumber String – 5 chars
CandidateNumber Integer – max 6 digits
CandidateID String – max 20 chars
TestDate "DD/MM/CCYY"
ModuleType “A” or “G”
FamilyName String – max 50 chars
FirstName String – max 50 chars
DateOfBirth "DD/MM/CCYY"
Gender M, F or U
Listeningtest Decimal – max 999.9
Readingtest Decimal – max 999.9
Writingtest Decimal – max 999.9
Speakingtest Decimal – max 999.9
Overall Decimal – max 999.9
TRFNumber String – max 20 chars
If you have any questions about the IELTS TRF verification service
and the electronic download facility, please contact
ieltstrf@ucles.org.uk