How course reviews work

• Our own courses: you must have bought the course on this site and opened it. Reviews open 14 days after you enrolled.
• Courses from listed providers: you must have had a place in one of the provider's groups for that course, recorded in their workspace on this site, and handed in at least one piece of homework. Reviews open 14 days after you joined the group.
• One review per course per person. You can edit or delete it at any time from your dashboard; an edited review is checked again before it reappears.
• A provider's owners and teachers cannot review their own courses.

These checks are made by our database when the review is saved, not only by the website, so a review cannot be published without the enrolment record behind it. Every published review shows the month the reviewer enrolled.

Nobody is paid, given a discount, free access, credits, entry to a prize draw or anything else for writing a review, whatever the rating. Each reviewer confirms this, and that they do not work for or have a personal connection with the provider, before they send a review.

Providers listed on this site agree not to offer anything for reviews, not to ask only learners they expect to be happy, not to write reviews themselves and not to have staff, friends or family write them. A provider who breaks these rules can have reviews removed and their listing withdrawn.

No provider can pay us to publish, remove, hide or reorder a review. Reviews are shown newest first, not by rating.

A person on our team reads every review before it is published, usually within three working days. Alongside the review we see the enrolment record, how much of the course the reviewer has used, when their account was opened, how many other reviews they have written and whether their email address shares a company domain with the provider's staff.

We publish negative reviews. A low rating, criticism of a course or of a provider, or a complaint is never a reason to reject a review. We do not edit what reviewers write. We reject or remove a review only when it is:

• Not a genuine account of taking the course, or written for someone else
• Written in return for payment, a discount or another benefit
• Written by someone working for or connected to the provider
• Contains personal information about someone else
• Abusive, hateful, threatening or discriminatory
• Unlawful content, or a false statement of fact about a named person
• Not about the course (for example, only about the IELTS test itself)
• Advertising, links or contact details

When we reject or remove a review, we email the reviewer with the reason, and they can change it and send it again or ask us to look again. We keep a record of every decision and the reason for it.

Next to the reviews we show how many learners were eligible to review the course and what share of them did, so you can see how representative the reviews are. We show an average rating only once a course has at least 3 published reviews.

A provider's owner can reply publicly to a published review of their course. Replies must not name the learner or discuss their personal details. Providers cannot see a review before it is published, cannot see who wrote it beyond the name the reviewer chose to show, and cannot remove it. We remove replies that break these rules.

If you think a review is fake, was paid for, was written by someone connected to the provider or breaks the rules above, use the “Report this review” link under it (you need to be signed in), or email [email protected]with the page and the reviewer's name. We look at every report and remove reviews that break this policy.

In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans fake reviews and reviews written in return for undisclosed incentives, and requires sites that publish reviews to take reasonable steps to prevent and remove them. This policy follows the Competition and Markets Authority's guidance on fake reviews (CMA208). Read the CMA guidance.

How we use reviewers' information is set out in our Privacy Policy. IELTS Prep Studio is a trading name of Heena Shaikh, a sole trader.