In my opinion, IELTS and the immigration authorities are coercing to fail people purposely for their own gain. They create an illusion about western countries and make people who attempt to take the test miss by 0.5 mark even though their effort deserves more than what they evaluate. In this case, the near miss of 0.5 will be a bait for you to either resit the exam or request a remark. Either way, one is a cash cow playing into the hands of the so called bigwigs. They claim to be fair and accurate with their marking scheme and yet there are instances in this forum where individuals have requested remark and obtained 0.5 to 2 band increase. This level of inaccuracy is very poor and makes me loose faith in the way the marking is conducted. Moreover the cost of remarking is so high that one gets discourage at the thought of it. Secondly, All of us are aware that IELTS authority take personal information such as career, nationality and other demographic information from candidate which i believe they make use of in determining who gets the right score. This results in certain professions being more likely to succeed in the test especially if they are in high demand in the west while others are far less likely to succeed as they are not in need.
Please note that I am not taking it personal because i have been on many others shoes where I got a near miss of 0.5. The funny thing is I am a first class student from a UK university and i have spoken English all my life. Studying in the UK is not easy, talk more of scoring a 1st. One is expected to do a lot of readings and write a lot of course work. If my English was not good enough I wont have been able to achieve that grade.
Another frustrating thing is the level of corruption,inequality, nepotism among other menaces in many of our countries that is pushing many youngsters and professionals to seek better opportunities elsewhere. This trend is likely to continue if we don't do something about it.
I cant really advice an individual to retake IELTS or request for EOR. But one thing I can advice and i am sure of is that if we build our countries to the standard we want, there will not be a need for immigration. It won't come easy but we know our future generations will benefit from it. You might even succeed with IELTS and end up migrating to the west but later in life you will want to return to the same place you have been running away from all your life.
For IELTS, this is my last attempt and have had enough.
Please check this video (
) and link(
http://www.thefreeschool.education/language-tests-review.html) of related lawsuits against IELTS and Canadian Government. Dont know how the author of the video has succeeded in his effort but this information might be insightful.
