PTE updates: September 2026

Pearson: the enhanced PTE Academic is the test you will sit

Since August 2025 PTE Academic has 22 task types. The two additions are speaking tasks: Respond to a Situation (a scenario on screen and in audio, 10 seconds to prepare, 40 to answer) and Summarize Group Discussion (up to three minutes of several speakers, two minutes to summarise). The 2025 score guide also restated which skills some items feed: in Academic, Read Aloud now counts towards Speaking only, Answer Short Question towards Listening only, and the dropdown reading blanks and the listening blanks towards Reading and Listening only. PTE Core kept its earlier dual credits for those items.

Preparation material dated before mid-2025 is out of date on task counts and on those credits. Every task page on this site has been rewritten against the current score guides.

Pearson: a January 2026 score guide for PTE Core

PTE Core’s score guide was updated in January 2026. The scales it publishes are the ones on this site’s Core task pages: Describe Image Content 0–5 with 3–4 items, Respond to a Situation scored on Appropriacy 0–3 with fluency and pronunciation and 20 seconds of preparation, Summarize Written Text at 25–50 words, Summarize Spoken Text at 20–30 words, and Write Email with seven traits including Email conventions.

Australia: per-skill PTE thresholds since 7 August 2025

The Department of Home Affairs replaced its single-score PTE Academic thresholds with per-skill minimums for tests taken from 7 August 2025. Superior English is now Listening 69, Reading 70, Speaking 88 and Writing 85; Proficient is 58, 59, 76 and 69; Competent is 47, 48, 54 and 51. There is no overall requirement. Tests taken up to 6 August 2025 are read on the older table (50, 65 and 79 in each skill) until 6 August 2028.

The practical change is that a balanced 79 is no longer Superior; the new table is a Speaking and Writing test. The Australia PR guide has the full tables and the points each level earns.

UK: the Skilled Worker route requires B2 from 8 January 2026

The English requirement for the Skilled Worker route rose to CEFR B2 from 8 January 2026, proven through a Secure English Language Test. For Pearson that means PTE Academic UKVI, booked as such at an approved centre and reported with a URN; standard PTE Academic does not count. The UKVI B2 guide covers the booking rules.

Canada: what IRCC accepts, and what it does not

IRCC accepts PTE Core, IELTS General Training and CELPIP-General for Express Entry and citizenship. PTE Academic is not accepted for immigration, and IRCC states that IELTS One Skill Retake is not accepted for Express Entry. Results must be less than two years old both when the profile is completed and when the application is submitted. The Core score chart has the per-skill CLB conversion.

Fees and retakes in 2026

PTE Academic is ₹18,900 including GST in India, A$490 in Australia, C$360 in Canada and £230 in the UK. IELTS is ₹19,000 in India (₹19,250 for UKVI), A$490 in Australia, C$335–361 in Canada and £235–260 at British Council UK centres. IELTS One Skill Retake, accepted by Australia, New Zealand and the UK but not by IRCC, is A$310 in Australia and about C$253 in Canada. PTE has no single-skill retake; a re-sit is the whole test, results arrive within days, and up to twelve sittings are allowed in a year. Fees and the four-country comparison are on the PTE vs IELTS page.

What changed on EdKnot this month

All 26 question-type pages were rewritten as long-form guides: what happens in the exam, how each task is scored with the official descriptor bands, a worked example and a weak answer, an in-exam method, a practice routine, a mistakes table and what a 65 and a 79 response look like. Twenty-five of them now carry additional real sample questions from the practice bank, with the answers; Describe Image is the exception because its images live in the practice player. The glossary was rebuilt to 45 terms with the numbers, tasks and FAQs behind each one, the task hubs gained a full index table, and new pages cover PTE results, the Core score chart, universities that accept PTE, PTE Core versus Academic, and plans for 65 and 50. Every fact on those pages was checked against Pearson, Home Affairs, IRCC, gov.uk or Immigration New Zealand this month; the sources are listed in the site’s facts file. This updates section also has an Atom feed, and the site’s llms.txt index is now generated from the same content registry as the pages.