Following directives of the Ministry of Education in combatting the spread of Covid-19, the National Education Examinations Authority (NEEA) and the British Council have been instructed to cancel all IELTS tests scheduled for May across Mainland China.

All test takers who have registered for an IELTS test in May in Mainland China will receive a full refund which will be credited to their personal registration account. Test takers who have already chosen to cancel their test in May need to raise a refund request through the IELTS registration website.

Many test takers in these locations will be delayed in sitting a test and subsequently sending their IELTS scores to institutions. We hope that schools, colleges, universities and other institutions understand that this delay will be through no fault of the candidate and hope that they will be able to extend the application process for these applicants.

The health and safety of test takers and test staff is our number one priority. Given the unprecedented nature of this pandemic the British Council continues to follow all directives made by the Chinese Government to contain the outbreak. We are in regular contact with authorities on this matter and are constantly reviewing the situation to ensure that when we are permitted to reopen testing, we will meet the needs of all test takers impacted by the ongoing cancellation of tests. Our intention remains to increase our testing capacity of both paper-based and computer-delivered tests to meet the needs of test takers.

We apologise for any inconvenience this action has caused and thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding at what is a very challenging time for us all.

If your students have registered for an IELTS test and have any concerns or questions about the arrangements for their test, please advise them to contact NEEA call centre directly (email: ielts.@mail.neea.edu.cn; tel: +86 10 8234 5671.) 

UK education institutions who require support for their work in China can contact the British Council China International Education Services team at IES.China@britishcouncil.org.cn 

UK education institutions can stay up to date with all the latest education news and implications of Covid-19 in East Asia through our dedicated thread found here.