How the scoring works

There are two scoring systems on this test, not one, and they behave completely differently. Get the difference straight and everything else about results makes sense.

The multiple choice subtests

English Language Skills, Reading and Mathematics are each converted from a raw count of correct answers to a scaled score. A scaled score of 200 is the pass on every one of them.

Scaling exists because versions of a subtest differ slightly in difficulty. Without it, a candidate who happened to draw a harder version would face a higher standard than one who drew an easier version, for the same certificate. Scaling adjusts the conversion per version so that 200 means the same thing either way.

The consequence is that the raw count behind 200 is not a fixed number. The Department publishes the maximum share of correct answers a scaled 200 can require, per subtest, and those are ceilings rather than thresholds. More on what 200 is and is not in what a scaled score of 200 means.

Read that last column as a ceiling. A harder version of a subtest may require slightly fewer correct answers, never more. And note that the three numbers differ, which is why no single percentage can describe this test.

The essay

Nothing about the essay is automatic. Your response is read by at least two independent qualified raters at standardized scoring sessions. Their scores are summed, and Rule 6A-4.0021 sets the passing total at 6.

Two people, one sum, one threshold. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth knowing because it tells you what a rater is doing: judging a single response holistically, not counting errors against a checklist.

We do not reproduce or paraphrase the vendor's score-point descriptors, which are its copyright and which we do not hold. What we can say is what the rule says: two raters, summed, passing total 6, about four weeks.

There is no overall score

This is the part that trips people up. The Department's position is that where an examination has multiple subtests, an examinee must achieve passing scores on all of them to be recorded as having passed at assessment level.

So there is no average, no aggregate and no overall percentage. A candidate scoring 68 percent on all three multiple choice subtests has passed English Language Skills and Mathematics and failed Reading, which is a perfectly ordinary outcome and impossible to describe with one number. That worked example is the whole argument in why there is no single FTCE pass percentage.

When each result arrives

Sit all four in one appointment and you leave with three answers and one open file. Anyone working to a deadline should plan around the essay's four weeks rather than around the immediate results.

What a score does not tell you

It makes one decision: pass or fail, per subtest. It does not tell you which questions you got wrong, and it does not identify which items on a version were experimental - the Department says a version may contain experimental questions that do not affect a score, and publishes no count for them.

Our honest position on diagnosing a fail is that the score report is thin evidence. A full timed mock you have the answer key to tells you more about what went wrong than the official result ever will, and it costs nothing but an afternoon.