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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. 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?
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:
The following table defines the CSV file format. The order of the data items will correspond to the layout of the CSV file.
If you have any questions about the IELTS TRF verification service and the electronic download facility, please contact ieltstrf@ucles.org.uk |
