80,000 IELTS Candidates Get Wrong Results, Question Leaks in Bangladesh

Thousands of migrants may have been given visas despite failing mandatory English language tests following a blunder over marking, The Telegraph has learnt.

Up to 80,000 people sitting a language test run by the British Council were given the wrong results, meaning many of them were given pass marks even though they had failed.

Separately, evidence of cheating has been discovered in China, Bangladesh and Vietnam, where criminals sell leaked test papers to migrants so that they know the answers in advance.

It means students, NHS workers and other migrants with a poor grasp of English have been given study or work visas to which they were not entitled.

The Conservatives called on the Government to deport anyone who had come to Britain without passing the test.

Every year, around 3.6 million people worldwide sit exams under the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), which is jointly owned by the British Council, Cambridge University Press & Assessment and the education company IDP.

Between August 2023 and September 2025, thousands of people received incorrect test scores, which IELTS blamed on “a technical issue which affected a small number of listening and reading components of some IELTS Academic and General Training tests”.

It said only around one per cent of tests were affected, but this would still equate to approximately 78,000 tests.

The problem was only discovered weeks ago, and last month IELTS contacted the affected people to give them their correct test results and “to offer our sincere apologies and to provide appropriate support”, the organisation said in a statement.

It is understood that some people’s marks were higher than they should have been, while some were lower.

Because it took so long to discover the problem, many people who were wrongly told they had passed would have been able to obtain visas and come to Britain legally.

Last year, the University and College Union said some universities were overlooking poor English language skills among overseas students because of the higher tuition fees they pay, while some lecturers have complained that up to 70 per cent of foreign students have insufficient grasp of English.

Coroners have also warned that too many people working in the NHS and social care have inadequate English, putting patients at risk and in some cases proving fatal. In one case involving a care worker who had never sat an English test, a coroner said they were unable to understand the difference between “breathing” and “bleeding” or between “alert” and “alive” when they spoke to a 999 call handler.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “Nearly a million people in England and Wales cannot speak English well or at all. We already have an integration crisis, and now we learn that up to 78,000 people may have received incorrect language test results before being granted visas. Those who obtained visas improperly must be removed.

“If people arrive here and never learn English, they cannot integrate and cannot build a life independent of the state. That is a catastrophic failure.”

Separately, there has been cheating on IELTS tests by people who pay criminals for advance copies of exam papers that they have managed to obtain.

In Bangladesh police arrested two people who had been charging people between £1,000 and £2,500 for advance copies of IELTS exam papers they had obtained through bribery.

In Vietnam, the British Council scrapped a scheduled exam at the last moment in February and switched it to a “back-up” version, prompting speculation of a leak. The council acknowledged at the time that there had been a rise in attempts to sell leaked exam papers. There has also been evidence of cheating in China.

Rupert Lowe, the independent MP, has been demanding answers from the Home Office about how many fraudulent IELTS certificates have been identified by UK Visas and Immigration over the past five years, only to be told the cost of finding the data would be “disproportionate”.

The British Council is largely self-funded through enterprises, including English tests, but also receives a taxpayer-funded top-up grant from the Foreign Office.

It has a £197m debt from a Covid-era government loan that it is struggling to repay, and any compensation claims that might result from the test scores blunder would make its financial position even worse.

The Home Office is in the process of awarding a new five-year contract worth £816m for the provision of English tests. The British Council is expected to face competition from other companies bidding for the contract.

An IELTS spokesman said: “IELTS recently identified an issue that led to a small proportion of test takers globally receiving incorrect results between August 2023 and September 2025. Over 99 per cent of IELTS tests during this time period were unaffected and there are no continuing issues with current IELTS tests.

“We have contacted affected test-takers to provide updated results, to offer our sincere apologies, and to provide appropriate support. We are also liaising with all relevant partners and authorities.

“We have strict quality control procedures in place to protect the integrity of the millions of IELTS tests we administer each year and have taken all necessary steps to prevent this issue from happening again.”