Editorial policy
These guides help people pass IELTS and meet visa and registration rules, so a wrong number can cost someone a test fee or an application. This page explains who writes them, what our scores mean, and how we keep the facts right.
The guides are written and maintained by the Cathoven IELTS team at Cathoven, the company behind the Cathoven IELTS practice platform, founded in 2022. They are published under the team's name rather than individual bylines.
Cathoven is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia or Cambridge Assessment English, which own the IELTS test.
Guides explain what the four marking criteria reward and penalise, using the public IELTS band descriptors. When we give a band for a sample answer, it is our assessment against those descriptors, not an official IELTS result.
The same applies to scores from the Cathoven platform: they are estimates to practise with, not a prediction of your test result.
Every English-language requirement we state for a visa or a professional register is kept as one record with its official source and the date we last confirmed it there. Every proposed change to the site is checked against those records automatically, and a sentence that contradicts one fails that check.
Every Monday an automated job compares each official page with the version we last confirmed. When a page changes, the team is alerted, re-reads the source, and updates the record and every guide that relies on it.
| Authority | Applies to | Last confirmed |
|---|---|---|
| Nursing and Midwifery Council (UK) | Overseas nurses and midwives registering in the UK | |
| Ahpra and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia | Health practitioners registering in Australia (all boards except the ATSI Health Practice Board) | |
| UK Home Office (Skilled Worker visa) | New Skilled Worker applications and switches from 8 January 2026 | |
| UK Home Office (approved SELTs) | UK visa applications that require a SELT | |
| Health and Care Professions Council (UK) | Allied health professionals registering in the UK | |
| IRCC (Canada Express Entry) | Federal Skilled Worker applicants, first official language |
IELTS Speaking topics change by season (January to April, May to August, September to December). A page that names a season covers that season's questions. Once a season ends, an automated check flags every page whose title still names it, so it is updated rather than left to age.
The Updated date on a guide changes when its content changes in a way a reader would notice: a new rule, new questions, a corrected fact or new guidance. It does not change for spelling fixes or design changes.
If you find an error, tell us through cathoven.com/contact. We check the claim against the official source, fix confirmed errors, and update the page date when the change is meaningful.