IELTS Exams Cancelled Across China Mid-Test, With Refunds but No Compensation

October 11 (IT Home) — According to a report today by China National Radio, IELTS exams run by the British Council were cancelled on a large scale across the country on 10 October. Some candidates received cancellation text messages while still waiting to sit the exam; others were told midway through, after finishing the listening section, to stop and leave. The exam customer service centre said the suspension was expected to last until the 12th.

Candidates who were due to sit the exam that day all received an email from the British Council’s IELTS customer service centre, stating that “the IELTS computer-delivered test on 10 October has been cancelled for technical reasons, and your test fee will be fully refunded to your NEEA account within one working day.” Staff confirmed that the technical failure would also affect exams on the following two days. Candidates who had already completed part of the test on the 10th would also be unable to receive a score for that sitting.

A staff member at the British Council exam customer service centre said: “It is true that the notice we received was that it had to be cancelled because of a technical failure, so we are very sorry. We would absolutely never cancel unless it were unavoidable. If you are in a hurry to book, we suggest looking at exams after the 13th; the fee for this sitting is already being refunded and should be back in your NEEA registration account within one to two days in theory. We have looked, and places for the later dates are actually quite tight. So if you really are in a hurry to register and need your score urgently, you can go ahead and book first.”

On social media, many candidates said they had travelled from other cities specifically for the exam and had already booked hotels, so transport and accommodation costs had already been incurred. Asked whether such losses could be compensated and whether affected candidates could reschedule with priority, staff responded that there were currently no such arrangements.

Ma Lin, a teacher who trains candidates for IELTS, said that the application season for institutions in Hong Kong, the UK, Singapore and elsewhere opens between September and October, and many candidates are concentrated on taking the test and submitting applications at this time. Some already hold conditional offers and are simply waiting for a language score that meets the requirement — and this suspension has landed right on their critical deadline. Ma Lin also suggested that candidates who are short of time could try contacting the institutions they are applying to and explaining the situation.

Chen Zhiwen, an academic committee member of the Chinese Society of Education Development Strategy, analysed that temporary cancellations of such exams are not unprecedented, but that a large-scale halt in the middle of an exam is genuinely rare. Behind the official explanation of “technical reasons,” he said, is the new test facing online exam systems built for the traditional internet environment: how to adapt to today’s technology.

IT Home notes that on 5 March this year, the British Council and IDP Education, which run IELTS, jointly announced that from mid-2026 IELTS would gradually stop paper-based testing worldwide and move entirely to computer-delivered testing.

On 9 May, IELTS officials further clarified the timetable for the Chinese mainland market: from 1 September 2026, general IELTS tests in the Chinese mainland would stop using paper entirely and move completely to computer delivery, while IELTS for UK Visas and Immigration would be the first to stop paper tests, from 1 July. That means candidates in the Chinese mainland entered a fully digital era for the exam in the second half of this year.

In fact, the shift to computer-delivered IELTS has been building for years: since 2021, the Chinese mainland has run paper-based and computer-delivered tests in parallel.