Why did two teachers give your IELTS essay different band scores?

When two teachers give the same IELTS essay different band scores, the most likely explanation is not that one of them is wrong. It is that they were looking hardest at different criteria — one reading for how well you answered the question, the other for how accurately you wrote it — and your essay gave each of them something real to find.

That is uncomfortable, because you paid for an answer and got two. But the disagreement is information. Below: why an essay can sit between two bands, which parts of the marking leave the most room for two readers to differ, what to do with two sets of feedback, why the official test builds in a second reading of its own, and where an automated check helps and where it does not.

One essay, two readings.

Why two teachers can give the same IELTS essay different band scores

An IELTS writing band is not one judgement. It is four: Task Response (Task Achievement in Task 1), Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Each is marked as a whole band against its own column of the public descriptors, and the four are averaged into the band for that task.

A real essay rarely matches every line of one band on every criterion. It usually shows evidence from two adjacent bands at once: a main paragraph that develops its idea properly next to one that only states it, or complex sentences that are accurate in three places and broken in the fourth. The marker's job is to decide which band that mixed evidence fits best — not which band's every line it satisfies.

Now give that essay to two teachers. Teacher A reads the second body paragraph, sees an idea stated and not supported, and places Task Response at 6. Teacher B reads the same paragraph, weighs it against a strong first paragraph and a clear position, and places Task Response at 7. Both applied the same descriptor. They weighed the same mixed evidence differently, and one criterion moving by a band moves the task average by a quarter.

Add a second criterion where the evidence is split and the two overall bands can easily end up half a band apart — without either teacher making a mistake. The disagreement is telling you that your essay is sitting on a line, which is useful to know.

There is a second, more ordinary cause. Teachers do not only give a band; they give a band and a lesson, and the lesson shapes what they notice. A teacher who has spent the term on grammar will read your essay with an eye on your sentences. A teacher who has been drilling essay structure will read it for paragraph logic. Neither is being careless. They are reading through the lens of what they teach.

Where the marking leaves most room: TR and CC

The four criteria are not equally open to interpretation, and knowing which is which tells you how much weight to give each disagreement.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy and Lexical Resource are marked largely on things you can point at on the page. Is this sentence error-free? Is this word used with the right collocation? Is there a spread of structures, or the same pattern repeated? Two readers can still differ — "a wide range" is not a number — but they are arguing about visible, countable features.

Task Response and Coherence and Cohesion ask for judgements about the essay as a whole. Is the position "clear throughout"? Are the main ideas "extended and supported", or only stated? Does each paragraph have "a clear central topic"? Is the cohesion "used flexibly", or does it read as mechanical? None of that is in one sentence. It depends on how the reader follows the argument from start to end, and two careful readers can follow the same argument and come away with different impressions of how far it was developed.

So as a working rule: a disagreement about grammar or vocabulary is usually a disagreement about specific sentences, and can be settled by looking at them. A disagreement about Task Response or organisation is usually a disagreement about the whole essay, and deserves a closer look at your weakest paragraph, because that is normally where the split sits.

This is reasoning from what the descriptors ask for, not a statistic. No published figures on how often IELTS markers agree on each criterion are quoted here, because none are available to cite. The descriptor wording referred to in this section is set out line by line in IELTS writing band descriptors explained.

What to do with two sets of feedback

The instinct is to compare the two numbers and pick one — usually the higher. That throws away the most useful thing you have, which is two independent readers pointing at your writing.

Do this instead.

1. Ignore the overall bands for now. Write down, for each teacher, every specific sentence or paragraph they flagged, and which criterion they tied it to. If a teacher gave you only a number and general comments, ask them which sentences drove the mark. A band without its evidence cannot be compared with anything.

2. Look for overlap. Where both teachers put a finger on the same paragraph or the same sentence, you have found a real fault. Two people reading independently and stopping at the same place is the strongest signal you will get about your writing. Fix those first, whatever criterion they fall under.

Where both readers stop at the same line, the fault is real.

3. Treat non-overlapping comments as questions, not verdicts. If Teacher A flagged your vocabulary and Teacher B did not mention it, that is not proof either way. Ask Teacher A which descriptor line they were applying and which band's wording your sentences fell short of. A comment that can be tied to a descriptor line is worth acting on. A comment that cannot — "it needs to sound more academic" — is a preference.

4. Check whether the split is on one criterion or several. If the two bands differ because of one criterion, your essay is on a boundary there, and a focused fix on that criterion is likely to settle it. If the teachers disagree on three criteria, the problem is usually not the marking; it is that the essay is uneven, strong in some paragraphs and weak in others. The fix there is consistency, not any single skill.

5. Retest on a new essay. One essay can land either side of a line by chance. Write another under timed conditions and see whether the same criterion comes out weak again. If it does, it is a habit and worth your time. If it does not, the first disagreement was probably about that one essay.

None of this is about deciding which teacher is better. Both gave you a reading; the overlap between them is worth more than either one alone. How to judge whether any single piece of feedback is worth acting on is covered in how to get IELTS writing feedback when you don't have a teacher.

The official test has room for a second reading too

It is tempting to think this is a problem with teachers and would disappear on test day, where a certified examiner marks your script. The test itself does not assume that.

IELTS runs an Enquiry on Results process, in which a candidate can ask for their script to be marked again by a different examiner (the official IELTS site explains how it works). A process like that only makes sense if a second trained reading can, on some scripts, legitimately land somewhere different from the first. Examiners are trained and monitored to mark consistently, and on most scripts two of them will agree. The scripts where they might not are the same kind your teachers split on: essays with evidence sitting between two bands on one or more criteria.

That changes what a disagreement between two teachers means. It is not a sign that the marking is broken. It is a sign that your essay is in the zone where marking is genuinely a judgement — which is also the zone where a small, targeted improvement moves you most, because you are already close to the next band on that criterion. Whether a re-mark is worth it after a real test result is worked through in is an IELTS writing remark worth it after a 6.5?

What "best fit" means in practice — how a marker weighs evidence from two bands and decides where a script sits — is the whole mechanism behind this, and is the subject of a separate guide on best-fit marking that is coming soon.

Automated scoring: what it does well, and where it is weaker

If two readers disagree, a third reading can help. An automated check is one option, and it is worth being clear about its limits before its strengths.

Where it is weaker. Task Response is the hardest criterion for software. Deciding whether an argument is "fully developed", whether an example actually supports the point, or whether a position stays clear from the introduction to the conclusion requires following meaning across the whole essay. An automated estimate can get that wrong, and it is most likely to get it wrong in exactly the borderline cases your teachers disagreed on. How close automated scores get to an examiner, and where they drift, is covered in how accurate are AI IELTS writing scores compared with a real examiner?

Where it helps. It reads the same essay the same way every time. It has no teaching lens, no preference for one criterion over another, and no idea how hard you worked on the essay. And a good one ties each criterion mark to specific sentences, which is exactly the evidence step 1 above asks you to collect.

So use it as a third reader in the comparison, not as the tie-breaker. Paste the essay your teachers disagreed on below. You get a separate band for each of the four criteria and the sentences each judgement is tied to.

Then put the three readings side by side. Where the automated check flags the same sentence as one or both teachers, move it to the top of your list. Where it agrees with one teacher's criterion band and not the other's, go back to that teacher's reasons and check them against the descriptor. Where all three disagree, the criterion is genuinely on a boundary for this essay — write a new one and see which way it falls.

FAQ

Why did two teachers give my IELTS essay different band scores?

Usually because each of them gave more weight to a different criterion, not because one of them is wrong. An overall band is a summary of four separate judgements — Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy — and an essay with evidence from two adjacent bands on one criterion can reasonably be placed either side of the line by two careful readers.

Which teacher's score should I believe?

Neither number on its own. Compare the sentences each teacher pointed to as the reason for their band. Where both put a finger on the same paragraph or sentence, that is a real fault and the first thing to fix. Where they point to different things, ask each one which descriptor line they were applying.

Which criteria do markers disagree on most?

The criteria that need the most interpretation. Whether an idea is "extended and supported" or whether a paragraph has "a clear central topic" is a judgement about the whole essay, so Task Response and Coherence and Cohesion leave more room than counting errors in a sentence does. No published agreement figures for IELTS writing are quoted here, because none are available to cite.

Do official IELTS examiners disagree too?

Marking by trained examiners is designed to be consistent, but the fact that IELTS runs an Enquiry on Results process, where a script can be re-marked, shows the test itself treats a second reading as something that can legitimately change a result.

Can an automated checker settle the disagreement?

It can give you a consistent third reading — the same essay gets the same judgement each time — and it can show which sentences each criterion mark is tied to. It is weaker on Task Response, where deciding whether an argument is fully developed is still hard for software, so treat it as evidence to compare, not a verdict.

Is the band estimate on this page official?

No. It is an estimate made against the public band descriptors. Only a certified examiner produces an official IELTS band.

Related reading

• Is an IELTS writing remark worth it after a 6.5? — when a second reading of an official script can change the result
• How accurate are AI IELTS writing scores compared with a real examiner? — where automated marking matches an examiner and where it drifts
• Can you see your IELTS score for each writing criterion? — why the four criterion marks matter more than the overall band
• Which IELTS writing criterion should you fix first? — turning a split result into one thing to work on

Descriptor wording referred to here is from the public Writing band descriptors published by IELTS and the British Council.