Please note: This is the IELTS cancellation policy for IELTS (Academic and General Training), you can find the IELTS for UKVI cancellation and refund policy here.
How to reschedule your IELTS test date
From 15 October 2024, you may reschedule or postpone your British Council IELTS test date or dates as follows:
For Listening, Reading and Writing component dates:
- From fourteen days before the (first component) scheduled test date, postponement is free of charge.
- From three to thirteen days before the scheduled test date (first component), a 25% administration fee will be charged *
- No IELTS test date transfers can be arranged with two days’ notice before the scheduled test date (first component), except in the exceptional circumstances stated below.
For Speaking test dates: Interviews can be rescheduled or postponed free of charge with at least three days’ notice before the (first component) scheduled test date.
Please note that transfer test dates must be within three months of the original test date. If you are unable to attend on the transfer test date, neither a further transfer nor a refund can be given.
To transfer your test date, please submit your Test Date Transfer request here. We will review your request and process it by following the Transfer Policies of the exams of which you registered.
Cancellation of your British Council IELTS test
You may cancel your British Council IELTS test:
- five weeks before the scheduled test date (first component) – you will be eligible for a refund of 75% of the test fee*
- less than five weeks before the scheduled test date (first component) – you will not be eligible for a refund.
- Note that refunds can take up to thirty days to process.
To cancel your registered IELTS test (Academic and General Training), please log in to your account on the Test Taker Portal and submit a cancellation request, along with an upload of supporting documentation/evidence.
Special Consideration
You may be able to request for an exception to be made to the standard transfer or cancellation policies, with supporting evidence, in cases of:
- A traumatic experience (traffic accident immediately before test, serious distress, personal distress on test day)
- Domestic or Family crisis including disruption in living arrangement, house moving; primary carer responsibilities (e.g. childcare, elderly relative); and serious crisis (e.g. divorce, eviction, other)
- Government mandated obligation (military service, jury service, pandemic, lockdowns, or unavoidable legal service (fire, military, police, etc)
- Serious medical conditions which prevent you from attending or performing normally on test day. This need to be verified by a medical certificate from a qualified medical practitioner** (does not include minor illness such as a mild cold)
- Bereavement, or other forms of significant hardship (crisis due to illness of a family member, death of extended family member within last month, death of immediate family member within last 2 months)
- Civil unrest, extreme weather, natural disaster.
You can apply for special consideration for test date transfer, or a partial refund, or a full refund before the test, and up to two calendar days after the test date. Supporting evidence must be submitted within a maximum of five working days after your scheduled test date. However, applications for special consideration will not be accepted after your results have been released.
You need to contact your test centre directly and provide full information as to why you qualify for special consideration with supporting evidence. Your test centre will assess your application and will respond to you within seven working days of receiving your full application in writing, during which time your results will be put on hold until a decision is finalised.
If your test centre approves your application, you will receive a refund or transfer. In some cases, this will be subject to an administrative fee. Please be aware that refunds can take two to four weeks to process. Note that there will be no adjustment to band scores.
If your test centre does not approve your exception request, then the standard transfer and refund policies, detailed above, will apply.
Test centre exceptions
Under certain circumstances outside test centre control, we may have to cancel your test. These circumstances include, but are not limited to, extreme weather conditions, natural disaster, civil unrest and industrial action. In these circumstances, your test centre will provide you with as much notice as possible and give you the choice of either:
- A full refund*, or;
- A transfer to a future test date.
* An additional bank transfer fee may be deducted by your bank.
** Only copies of medical certificates from a certified medical professional can be accepted. Please keep the original document with you as we may require it for further verification.