Superior English PTE Score: English Points for Australian PR

What each English level is worth

English does two separate jobs in a skilled migration application, and they sit in different places in the law. As a gate, competent English is compulsory: clause 189.223 for a subclass 189 and clause 190.213 for a subclass 190 both require that you had it at the time of invitation, and without it there is no invitation to be scored. As a score, English is Part 6D.2 of Schedule 6D, which awards 20 points for superior English and 10 for proficient — and nothing at all for competent.

That is the part people misread. Competent English sitting at 0 points looks like a level you can skip, when it is the one level you cannot. Points begin above it.

The spread is also the widest of any single criterion. Between the floor and the top sits 20 points, all of it available to anyone willing to sit a test again — which is not true of your age, and not true of the years you have already worked.

Where English sits among the other criteria — and what your total comes to — is on the Australia PR points calculator.

PTE Academic scores for each level

Each of the four components has its own minimum, and your lowest one decides your level. Clear every superior threshold but land on 84 in writing and you are proficient, not superior; there is no averaging, and a strong component cannot carry a weak one.

What changed on 7 August 2025

LIN 25/016 commenced on 7 August 2025 and repealed IMMI 15/005, the 2015 instrument that had specified the test scores until then. The old scores were flat — one number across all four components, 50 for competent, 65 for proficient, 79 for superior. The new ones are per component.

Read the two side by side and the change is not simply that it got harder. For PTE Academic, listening and reading came down at every level while writing and speaking went up: superior listening fell from 79 to 69, and superior writing rose from 79 to 85. Someone who reads well and writes adequately has an easier target than they did; someone whose writing was carrying a weak listening score has a harder one. IELTS did not move at all — 6, 7 and 8 in each component, before and after.

Page-one results still publish the flat figures as current, including pages stamped this year and one that presents 79 in all four components as the new requirement. Two of them contradict themselves inside a single page, quoting the repealed numbers in prose and the current ones in their own tables.

Migration (Specification of Language Tests, Test Scores and Passports) Instrument 2025 (LIN 25/016), Schedule 2 (opens in a new tab) verified 29 Jul 2026

Sat your test before 7 August 2025? The old scores still stand for it

They do, and this is where the correction runs the other way. LIN 25/016 did not simply delete the old thresholds — section 10 of the same instrument re-specifies them for tests undertaken before it commenced. If your test predates 7 August 2025, it is assessed against the scores that applied when you sat it, across the five tests specified then.

The department puts the outer limit plainly: test results from a test taken on or before 6 August 2025 may be used as evidence of English proficiency for visa purposes until 6 August 2028, inclusive. This will depend on the visa.

So both halves of the search results are wrong, in opposite directions. A page telling you 79 is still the superior requirement is wrong about every test sat since commencement. A page telling you the flat scores are dead is wrong about the result already sitting in your account.

The 3-year window runs to your invitation

Your test must have been taken within the 3 years immediately before your invitation was issued. Not before you lodge, and not before you submit an expression of interest. Regulations 1.15C, 1.15D and 1.15EA each say so for their own level, and the difference matters more here than it would in most systems, because the wait between those moments is long. The department’s guidance puts it at up to two years from expression of interest to invitation, followed by 60 calendar days to apply that cannot be extended.

A score that is comfortably valid the day you lodge your expression of interest can therefore be expired the day it is finally worth something. That is a different question from how long your result stays in your test provider’s account, which is the two-year figure some pages quote; what governs a points claim is the 3 years before invitation.

Migration Regulations 1994, regulations 1.15C(1)(ba), 1.15D(b) and 1.15EA(b) (opens in a new tab) verified 29 Jul 2026

A passport from 5 countries gives competent English only

Holding a valid passport from Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom or the United States of America establishes competent English without sitting a test. Regulation 1.15C(2) provides for it and LIN 25/016 lists the countries.

What it does not do is give you points. The exemption reaches competent English and stops there, and competent English is worth 0. Proficient and superior are defined by test scores, and there is no passport route into either. A British engineer who assumes their passport has settled the English question has cleared the gate and claimed nothing — the 20 points for superior English are as available to them as to anyone else, and just as unavailable without a test result.

Migration Regulations 1994, regulation 1.15C(2); LIN 25/016, s 7(4) and Schedule 3 (opens in a new tab) verified 29 Jul 2026

Partner English: competent is the bar

Where your partner is applying with you, what the points test asks of their English is competent — the same level as your own floor, not the proficient level some tables claim. Item 6D111 awards 10 points on the terms in the first scored row below, all of which have to hold together. Item 6D113 awards 5 where your partner has competent English but no skills assessment, which is the row most often missed: a partner who sits one test and nothing else is still worth points.

Item 6D112 is the separate case — 10 points where you have no partner, or your partner is an Australian citizen or permanent resident. How those items interact, and what happens when circumstances change mid-application, is set out with the rest of the criterion on the Australian points test page.

Is English your cheapest 10 points?

For most applicants it is the only criterion still genuinely in play, and the arithmetic makes the case better than an argument does.

Take a civil engineer of 34 with six years in her occupation overseas, a bachelor degree her assessing authority has recognised, no Australian study or work, and no partner applying. She has competent English.

She reaches 60, which is below the pass mark — and nothing about her age, her degree or her experience can be changed this year. Proficient English takes her to 70 and superior to 80. One test moves her from short of the floor to clear of it with room above.

The alternatives cost years and pay less. Another three years in her occupation overseas moves her into the next employment band and adds 5. A credentialled community language and a professional year together come to 10 — two programs, both measured in years, for what one test sitting is worth. Her age, meanwhile, is working against her: the band she occupies on invitation day is the one that scores, and her next boundary takes points away rather than adding them.

Model it against your own profile on the 189 points calculator or the 190 points calculator, both of which score English from this same table.

Frequently asked questions