HYDERABAD: The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) scam that surfaced with the arrest of three youngsters for impersonation in Pune recently allegedly involves members of the agency contracted to conduct the test by IDP Education, Australia’s biggest international student recruitment company, reported The Age, Australia’s national newspaper.

The Pune police arrested Paul Dinkar Sitaram Nunavat, Sai Abhishek and Joel K.A. Shastri, all from Hyderabad and impounded fake passports from their possession. They were later sent to police custody. The newspaper says that the Indian police were tipped off about the scam earlier this year by IDP Education itself.

“Revelations of the scam call into question the integrity of the English-language testing system for foreign students, and raise fears that some Indian students are entering Australia using English language certificates gained by fraud,” the report said. IDP, the British Council and Cambridge University deliver the IELTS in 120 countries, with a near monopoly on the world’s leading English language proficiency tests.

IDP Education has subcontracted the test to a company called Planet EDU to conduct the tests in India. The man arrested by the police, was operations manager at Planet EDU until September 2008, when he was sacked, according to the Age report.

Consultants dealing with Australian education for several years have been complaining that impersonation was being encouraged by some insiders for money and this has led to a bad image about Australian education. They accuse that such fraudulent moves have resulted in unqualified people going to Australia with an eye on Permanent Residency and finally falling prey to unsocial elements there resulting in ‘racial’ attacks.

“Most of the victims in the widely reported racial attacks were unqualified to enter Australia,” argues Ravilochan Singh, past president of Association of Australian Education Representatives in India (AAERI). “The root cause is here and it has to be stemmed,” feels a consultant from Hyderabad. He said that people involved in the scam were charging no less than Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1 lakh for arranging impersonators.

He alleges that managers of IDP branches in India are openly accepting money for IELTS scores and documentation. The consultants believe that the solution lies in ending the monopoly of IDP on English testing and immediately start accepting TOEFL scores also.