IELTS exam: IDP monopoly worries immigration firms

Deepkamal Kaur
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, July 13

The recent reports of acquisition of the British Council’s IELTS operations by the International Development Programme (IDP) has made the huge local market of IELTS training centres and immigration companies very jittery.

Reason: Earlier, the students could pick from a testing centre of either IDP or the British Council. But now, all IELTS testing in the country will be conducted by the IDP only ending the prevailing competition. The owners of local coaching centres feel that the company has now got the monopoly and it will operate without any market competition. They fear that the IDP, which runs immigration and consultancy services too, will also get highly empowered and their businesses will surely get hit by this move.

Sukant Nain Trivedi, an immigration company owner, said, “Our apprehension is that a student who registers itself for IELTS at IDP will prefer applying for foreign admission or immigration also through them taking it as a one-stop shop. Why would he come to us now?”

He added, “IDP Education is their private international student enrolment division which can now influence the student market through all unfair means. It will get data of each and every student registering himself for the test. Data of students aspiring to go abroad is all what one needs in this business.”

The company officials claim that there is no sharing of data between the IDP’s IELTS division and IDP Education, the company’s student enrolment division.

Both the companies compete with one another in as many as 53 countries. They had jointly conducted over 3.5 crore tests in the country till the last year. IELTS testing is a high stake business in the country. The British Council will stop offering IELTS from July 25 and its bookings have already stopped. But with the entire stakes of the very popular English language testing in India going to one company has definitely raised many eyebrows.

Jaspal Singh, president, Association of Consultants for Overseas Studies, said, “Monopoly is bad in any business. Competitive environment should always be allowed for fair play.”

Kamal Narang, vice-president, North Immigration and Consultants for Education, said “Exploitation is a very big possibility when there is just one player left in any business. Services can get affected and pricing for tests may also increase. Checks and balances are definitely required since IELTS is a huge market here.”