IELTS or Cambridge: Which Certificate Lasts Longer?

Whenever students ask me whether they should take IELTS or a Cambridge exam, sooner or later we arrive at the question of validity.

“How long does the certificate last?”

The answer most people know is simple: IELTS – two years; Cambridge – forever.

Technically, this is true. It is also somewhat misleading.

Cambridge English certificates do not expire. If you passed C2 Proficiency in 2016, you are still perfectly entitled to say that you passed it in 2016. The certificate remains valid as a qualification and records the level you demonstrated when you took the exam.

What it does not do is guarantee that your English will remain at exactly the same level for the rest of your life.

I think of it in much the same way as a university degree. A degree does not expire. Ten or twenty years after graduation, you do not suddenly cease to have it. At the same time, the fact that you studied a particular subject years ago should not necessarily prove that your knowledge of it is still as good as it was then.

Languages are no different.

Cambridge itself is quite explicit about this. Its certificates are valid indefinitely, but they show that on a particular date you demonstrated language skills at a particular level. Universities, employers and other organisations are free to decide how recent that evidence needs to be, and some require Cambridge qualifications obtained within the previous two or three years.

I discovered this distinction in a rather less theoretical way when I was applying for a PhD course.

I proudly submitted my C2 Proficiency certificate with a shiny score of 229 on it, rather expecting somebody at the admissions office to be at least mildly astonished – I had, after all, carried this particular feather in my cap for quite a while.

The only line I received in return, referring to my thought-to-be-magnificent achievement, was essentially: You might want to consider taking IELTS, TOEFL or – forgive-me-my-French – Duolingo, since your certificate is more than two years old.

So much for the 229.

My CPE certificate had not expired. Nobody was disputing the result. The university simply wanted recent evidence of my English.

And this is not unusual. Universities, including Cambridge and Oxford, may accept C1 Advanced and C2 Proficiency while at the same time requiring the test to have been taken within a certain period before the course begins. In other words, even a Cambridge certificate may eventually become too old for a particular application.

IELTS works somewhat differently. We often say that IELTS is “valid for two years”, but even this is a simplification. IELTS recommends that results normally be considered valid for two years because language ability can change over time. The institution receiving the result may, however, decide to accept an older one.

So IELTS does not suddenly become meaningless two years after the test, just as Cambridge does not provide permanent proof of your current level simply because its certificates have no expiry date.

This is why I would not choose between IELTS and Cambridge on the basis of which one “lasts longer”.

If you need a certificate for a particular purpose – university admission, migration or professional registration – start with the requirements of the organisation you are applying to. Check which exams they accept, what score they require and how recent the result has to be. There is little point in choosing Cambridge because somebody told you that the certificate lasts forever if the university you want to attend will only accept a result from the previous two years.

If, however, obtaining the qualification itself matters to you, Cambridge may be the more attractive option. Passing C1 Advanced or C2 Proficiency is an achievement that remains part of your academic and professional record. Nobody can later take it away from you simply because time has passed.

But that is different from saying that the certificate proves your current level forever.

So perhaps the question should not really be:

Which certificate lasts longer?

It should be:

What do I need the certificate for?

Once you know the answer to that, the choice between IELTS and Cambridge usually becomes much easier.