IELTS is standardised test jointly conducted by British Council, Cambridge English Language Assessment and IDP Education. The test was established in 1989 to test and certify the proficiency of the non-native English speakers.
PTE was launched by Pearson in 2009 and thus is one of the latest test which is being opted by many of the people who want to go abroad .
IELTS is very popular English proficiency test accepted by European, Australian and now even by most of the American universities too. The PTE test by Pearson is also getting wide recognition in universities across all regions and its test takers are also increasing in number.
Both IELTS and PTE have two common versions: Academic and General Training. The Academic versions are meant for students planning for an admission into a university whereas for non academic purpose, the general versions of IELTS and PTE certify one's realistic communication skills.
IELTS and PTE have similar test sections of Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing. However, there are certain unique features in content pattern which differentiates apart from each other.
An IELTS examiner evaluates the speaking abilities of the candidates by making live conversions, which are recorded also. But in PTE, there is no live conversation and candidate has to speak to a microphone for getting recorded in a system. A computer program evaluates the speaking and rates accordingly. Whereas IELTS is completely paper based test in which student has to describe different graphs and images for writing section.
Whereas PTE is totally computer based as student has to go through various innovative activities to prove his writing capabilities. IELTS has set timing which they can move forward or backward whereas in PTE they can move forward only.
PTE is based on automatic scoring and grades a test taker in the score 10-90. In IELTS,from 0-9 band is used manually for scoring IELTS.
Every year IELTS Academic is conducted in 48 pre-fixed dates at more than 900 centres spread over 130 countries. The IELTS centres are available in so many countries whereas PTE centres are available in 15 cities in INDIA.
The IELTS test result is posted after 13 days after the test whereas in PTE , result is declared within 5 working days.