Speaking is the module everyone skips
It needs a prompt, a voice, a recording, and a examiner-style judgement. Most platforms either omit it or post static cue cards, which is the module students most need to rehearse.
An IELTS exam room that fits in a browser.
Most online IELTS sites are question banks that quietly skip Speaking. We built IELTS Test BD as a complete testing platform: all 4 skills, browser-recorded Speaking with AI transcripts and band estimates, work that survives a dropped connection, and an admin workspace that runs the whole centre.
The build
A test centre, rebuilt as software.
Public site, testing engine, AI scoring and admin, built from scratch
The work
The work, up close.
15 pieces of the platform, from the public page a student lands on to the workspace the centre runs it from.
Public site
A promise a student can check in one screen
Real exam experience, instant results, progress tracking and data security, stated on the first screen with a live view of the product behind them. The admission office numbers sit in a strip above the navigation, because a large share of this audience still decides by phoning the centre.
Office contact above the fold on every page
Course library
Bundles, not a wall of individual tests
8 active bundles from a free trial through to 24 mock tests, each one searchable and filterable by level. A free full mock sits at the top of the list on purpose, so a student can complete a real test before being asked to pay for anything.
Free full mock available before purchase
Course detail
What you get, what it costs, what you walk away with
Each bundle separates what is included from what the student should be able to do afterwards. Pricing shows the list price against the current price, and a promo code applied at checkout is validated on the server rather than trusted from the browser.
Discounts calculated server-side, never client-side
Four skills
Every module keeps its own exam-room rhythm
Listening runs on audio-led parts with protected playback. Reading uses passage layouts built for scanning and matching. Writing carries word counts and rubric review. Speaking runs Introduction plus Parts 1, 2 and 3. They stay distinct where the exam is distinct, and connected where progress needs to add up.
4 modules, 1 progress record
Official registration
The centre's offline business, brought online
Beyond mock tests, the centre registers candidates for the real IELTS exam. This form collects test date, venue, module, delivery type, passport and NID details, destination countries and document scans, then generates a reference number and lands in an admin inbox with the uploads attached.
Identity documents stored in private storage
Student workspace
The dashboard answers one question: what next
The mock card carries all 4 modules as compact rows, each showing Start, Resume or Result depending on where the student actually is. The main action changes with them, so a returning student is 1 tap from the right place instead of navigating a menu to find it.
Action label follows the real attempt state
Independent modules
Four skills, four evenings, if that is what fits
A student is never forced to sit a full mock in one session. Listening today and Speaking on Saturday is a supported path, and each module scores and reports on its own. Once all 4 are complete the platform calculates the overall band from them.
Modules scored separately, band combined at the end
Test runner
Work that survives a reload, a tab close, or a dead connection
Note the timer, the word targets on each task tab, and the word "Saved" in the toolbar. Answers save to the server as the student writes, and a local draft is written before the network call even completes. Reopen the test and it restores the exact question, the notes, the mode and the remaining time.
Server autosave plus a local draft, merged by timestamp
AI Speaking
The module every other platform leaves out
Speaking opens with a headphone check, a microphone check and a waiting room, so a student finds out their audio is wrong before the test rather than after it. Then they answer each part aloud in the browser. The checks guide without trapping: a student who wants to proceed can.
Audio verified before the attempt, not after
Score dashboard
Progress by skill, and what to practise next
Average band, best band, completed attempts and pending reviews across the top, then a panel per skill holding best, average and attempt count. Alongside it sits a recommendation that names the single most useful next test, so a student is not left to interpret their own weakest area.
Weakest skill drives the next recommendation
Full mock report
One report instead of four loose scores
Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking are grouped under the parent mock, with a band for each skill and an overall band rounded to the nearest half. Objective questions show the student's answer beside the correct one with an explanation. Writing and Speaking show rubric feedback and, for Speaking, the transcript of what was said.
Answers released only after submission
Review workflow
Feedback that names the fix, not just the score
Writing is evaluated against the 4 IELTS criteria: task achievement, coherence, lexical resource and grammatical range. The platform produces a preliminary band and rubric notes, then an admin corrects or confirms them. The comments land directly in the student's result page rather than in a separate message.
Automated first pass, human final say
Admin workspace
It opens on the decisions waiting, not on a chart
The first screen asks what needs attention now: writing reviews queued, payments awaiting approval, registrations submitted, and today's activity. Analytics exist, but they are not what an operator needs at 9am. Common tasks sit beside the queue so the next action is 1 click, not a navigation exercise.
Work queues before analytics, by design
Gradebook
Grouped by mock test, the way a centre thinks
Results are grouped under the parent mock rather than listed as unrelated skill attempts, so a student is 1 row with 4 module states and an overall band. Submitted work opens straight from the queue. Student names in this view are blurred here for privacy; the live workspace shows them in full.
1 row per mock, not 4 per student
Content builder
The centre writes its own tests
A 4 step builder covering test details, sections, questions and solutions, with skill, status, duration and band target set per test. Answer keys entered here stay on the server and are used only for scoring. Adding a new mock or a new Speaking variation is an afternoon in the admin, not a development ticket.
Answer keys never leave the server
The client.
IELTS Test BD is the online mock-test platform of British Language Club, an IELTS international test and visa processing centre in Rajshahi running admission offices at Kazla and Vodra.
At a glance
The engagement, on paper.
- Client
- IELTS Test BD, the online mock-test arm of British Language Club in Rajshahi, Bangladesh.
- Audience
- Bangladeshi candidates preparing for Academic and General Training IELTS, on phones as often as laptops.
- Scope
- Public site, course and checkout, 4 skill test runner, AI Speaking evaluation, results and certificates, payments, official registration, and 3 role-based workspaces.
- Stack
- React and TypeScript on Cloudflare Pages, with Pages Functions handling every sensitive server-side action.
- Data
- Supabase Postgres with row level security, role-based access, and private storage for documents and payment proof.
- AI
- Speaking transcription and band estimation through a provider-agnostic pipeline with structured output validation.
- Workspaces
- Student, teacher and admin, each gated by role rather than by hidden links.
The challenge
Four skills. Real timing. And Speaking, which nobody solves.
An IELTS mock test is not a quiz. Getting it right online breaks most of what a normal web app assumes.
Marking 4 skills by hand does not scale
Listening and Reading can be marked mechanically, but Writing and Speaking need judgement. With one centre and hundreds of attempts, manual review becomes the bottleneck that caps enrolment.
A dropped connection can destroy an hour
Test sessions run 30 to 60 minutes on connections that are not always stable. Losing a Writing task to a reload is the fastest way to lose a student permanently.
Nobody has 3 spare hours on a weeknight
A full mock is 4 modules back to back. Students working or studying full time need to split it across days without the platform treating that as an abandoned attempt.
Payment here is not just a card field
Much of this market pays by mobile transfer and expects to send a transaction reference and a screenshot. A card-only checkout would exclude a large share of genuine buyers.
Answer keys have to stay secret
If correct answers ship to the browser with the questions, the test is worthless. They have to be withheld during the attempt and released only once it is submitted.
The goals
7 goals, in order.
Set before the build, and the order decided what got solved first.
01
Put all 4 skills in one place
Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking under one mock identity, so a student sees a test rather than 4 unrelated exercises.
02
Make Speaking actually possible
Record in the browser, transcribe it, and return a criterion-based estimate, so the hardest module stops being the one that gets skipped.
03
Never lose a student's work
Autosave to the server, keep a local draft as a second net, and restore the exact position on return.
04
Let each module stand alone
Any skill on any day, scored independently, with the overall band assembled once all 4 are done.
05
Return a band, not just a mark
Raw scores mean nothing to an IELTS candidate. Every module ends in a band estimate with feedback attached.
06
Take payment the way the market pays
Mobile transfer with a reference and proof, reviewed and approved by a human, with a card gateway ready behind it.
07
Give the centre 1 place to run it
Students, tests, scores, payments, registrations, documents and feedback in a single workspace instead of a spreadsheet and an inbox.
Our strategy
The decisions behind the platform.
Where we chose a harder path, and what it bought.
Automate the objective modules, keep judgement on the subjective ones
Listening and Reading mark themselves against a server-held key. Writing and Speaking get an automated first pass that an admin can correct. That splits the work so volume scales without pretending a model has final say on a band.
Design the Speaking room around failure, not the happy path
Microphones are wrong, tabs get closed, uploads fail. So audio is checked before entry, each answer records separately and can be retried alone, and finished recordings are held in the browser's own storage so a reload does not erase them.
Treat autosave as a correctness problem
Naive autosave loses data when an older request finishes after a newer one. Saves are debounced and ordered, later writes cannot be overwritten by earlier ones, and local and server state are merged by timestamp rather than by whichever loaded last.
Keep answer keys server-side without exception
Correct answers are never part of the data the test page loads. They are applied during server-side scoring and released to the student through a separate endpoint only after submission, which is the only version of this that actually holds.
Make manual payment a first-class flow, not a fallback
Most platforms bolt local payment on as an afterthought. Here the proof upload, the private storage, the admin review and the approval emails were built as the primary path, with the card gateway kept ready alongside it.
Build the admin as a work queue
An operator's question is what needs deciding today, not how many users signed up this quarter. So the workspace opens on pending reviews, payments and registrations, and the analytics sit behind that.
The testing engine
What happens during a test.
The behaviour that separates a real mock from an online quiz.
The signature feature
How the AI Speaking test actually works.
4 stages, and what each one had to solve.
01 · The speaking room
- A dedicated interface separate from text questions, showing the current part and prompt
- Introduction, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 each presented with their own instructions
- A generated examiner voice reads the prompt, and the student can replay it
- A caption stays visible so the prompt is readable if audio playback fails
- A 1 minute preparation timer for the Part 2 cue card, with target response times shown
02 · Recording and recovery
- Recording happens in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with no app to install
- Each response records independently, so one answer can be retried without losing the rest
- Students can replay every saved recording before they submit
- Finished recordings are held in the browser's own storage, so a reload or a closed tab does not erase them
- Oversized or invalid audio is caught before submission, with Safari-compatible fallbacks
- Explicit consent is required before any audio is sent for evaluation
03 · Transcription and band estimation
- Every recorded answer is transcribed and attached to the prompt it belongs to
- Submitted question IDs are validated against the selected test, so audio cannot attach to the wrong one
- Evaluation covers fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation
- The result is a band from 0 to 9 rounded to the nearest half, with a comment per criterion
- Structured output validation rejects malformed model responses instead of storing them as a score
- Band values are constrained to the valid range before they reach a student's report
04 · Human oversight
- The interface presents the result as an IELTS-style practice estimate, not an official score
- Administrators can review the output and request a rescore
- An administrator can correct or finalise the band and the rubric feedback
- Evaluation events are logged so failures can be traced rather than guessed at
- Raw audio is not retained as a permanent student document; the report keeps the transcript, band and feedback
Running the centre
One workspace, the whole operation.
18 management screens, grouped by the job they do.
01 · Decisions waiting
- Pending payment approvals, with payer, method, reference and proof in one view
- Writing and Speaking submissions queued for review
- Official registration submissions with candidate documents attached
- Today's activity: new students, payment records, attempts touched, reviews pending
02 · Results and students
- A gradebook grouped by main mock test rather than by loose skill attempts
- A unified 4 skill report with scores, feedback, answers and certificate controls
- Student detail pages carrying activity, payments, results, documents and certificates
- Search and filtering by student, course, skill and status
- Historical standalone attempts stay reachable even when not tied to a test set
03 · Content and courses
- A test builder covering test details, sections, questions and solutions
- Skill, status, duration and band target configured per test
- Course, package and product management, with enrolment and access control
- Audio and test-asset management for Listening material
- New Speaking variations added as content, without touching the product
04 · Money, documents and email
- Payment review and approval, with rejection notes that keep access locked
- Admit cards, money receipts, enrolment documents and course certificates
- Full-mock certificates issued once all 4 published skills are complete and scored, once per student per test set
- Email templates and delivery, with idempotency protection against duplicate sends
- Settings for brand, support contact, payment instructions and communication
The comparison
A question bank, or a test centre.
What separates this from the practice sites it competes with.
A typical practice siteWhat we built
SpeakingOmitted, or a page of static cue cardsRecorded in the browser, transcribed, and scored on 4 criteria
MarkingManual for every submissionAutomatic for Listening and Reading, AI first pass on Writing and Speaking
Losing workA reload costs the attemptServer autosave and a local draft, restored to the exact question
SchedulingAll 4 modules in one sittingAny module on any day, each scored independently
ReportingFour unrelated percentagesOne full-mock report with a band per skill and an overall band
Answer keysShipped to the browser with the questionsHeld server-side, released only after submission
PaymentCard onlyMobile transfer with proof and admin approval, gateway ready
CertificatesIssued by hand, if at allIssued automatically on full-mock completion, once per test set
OperationsA spreadsheet and an inboxOne workspace for students, tests, payments, registrations and documents
What was built
The platform, by the numbers.
These count what was delivered. They describe scope, not traffic or revenue.
4Skills scored
18Admin screens
8Course bundles live
3Role-based workspaces
Business impact
What the centre can do now.
These describe how the platform changes the operation. They are not separately measured outcomes.
Speaking practice finally scales
A student can rehearse a full Speaking test and get criterion feedback without an examiner sitting with them, which is the part of preparation that used to cap how many students the centre could serve.
Marking time collapses
Listening and Reading need no human at all, and Writing and Speaking arrive pre-scored with rubric notes, so review becomes confirmation rather than assessment from scratch.
Students stop losing work
The most common reason people abandon an online test is losing an hour to a reload. Two layers of saving mean a dropped connection costs seconds, not the attempt.
Preparation fits around a job
Independent modules let a working student practise in the time they actually have, which turns a full mock from a weekend commitment into 4 manageable sessions.
Payment works the way the market works
Accepting a mobile transfer with a reference and a screenshot, reviewed by a person, keeps the buyers a card-only checkout would have turned away.
One system instead of five
Students, tests, scores, payments, registrations, documents and email live together, so the centre stops reconciling a spreadsheet against an inbox against a folder of receipts.
Questions
The short version.
What did Rizer build for IELTS Test BD?
The whole platform, not a website with a quiz attached:
- Public site: homepage, course bundle library, course detail pages, checkout, support, and the official IELTS registration form.
- Testing engine: Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking with real and practice modes, ordered autosave, and exact-position resume.
- AI Speaking: browser recording, local recovery, transcription, 4 criterion evaluation, and half-band estimates with feedback.
- Results: per-module reports, a unified 4 skill full-mock report with an overall band, and automatic certificates.
- Operations: student, teacher and admin workspaces covering payments, reviews, registrations, content building, documents and email.
How does the AI Speaking test work?
It runs the shape of a real Speaking interview, in a browser:
- Before it starts: a headphone check, a microphone check and a waiting room, so audio problems surface before the test rather than after.
- During: the examiner voice reads each prompt with a caption fallback, Part 2 gets its 1 minute preparation timer, and each answer records separately so one can be retried alone.
- Safety net: finished recordings are kept in the browser's own storage, so a reload or a closed tab does not lose them.
- After: each answer is transcribed, evaluated on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation, then returned as a half-band estimate with per-criterion comments.
- Consent: audio is only sent for evaluation after the student explicitly agrees, and raw audio is not kept as a permanent document afterwards.
Is the AI band an official IELTS score?
No, and the platform is deliberate about saying so:
- What it is: an IELTS-style practice estimate, produced on the same 4 criteria a real examiner uses, to show a student roughly where they stand and what to fix.
- What it is not: an official result. Only the test partners can issue those, and the interface never presents the estimate as one.
- Human oversight: an administrator can request a rescore, or correct and finalise the band and rubric feedback themselves.
- Guardrails: malformed model output is rejected rather than stored, and band values are constrained to the valid 0 to 9 range before they reach a report.
What happens if a student's connection drops mid-test?
Very little, which was the point:
- Two layers: answers save to the server as the student works, and a local draft is written before the network request finishes.
- Ordering: saves are debounced and applied in order, so a slow earlier request cannot overwrite newer input.
- On return: local and server state are compared by timestamp and only newer local data is merged, then the exact question, notes, mode and remaining time are restored.
- Leaving the page: progress flushes when a field loses focus or the tab is hidden, and the runner warns before a student navigates away from a running test.
Can Rizer build a platform like this for my institute?
Yes. This is the largest build in our portfolio and the pattern transfers:
- Best fit: training centres and coaching institutes whose delivery is capped by how much marking and admin their staff can absorb.
- What transfers: timed testing with reliable autosave, automated scoring with human review, role-based workspaces, local payment handling, and document generation.
- What is specific: the IELTS band logic, the 4 skill structure and the Speaking criteria were built for this exam and would be rebuilt for yours.
- What to weigh: a platform on this scale is a serious build, not a website project, and it earns back through the staff hours it stops consuming.
- Next step: book a free call and tell us what you teach.
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Your turn
Is marking the thing capping your growth?
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