Fewer than half the boards that publish a grade want B in all four.
“You need a B in everything” is the most repeated claim in OET preparation and it is wrong for most people who hear it. Of the 131 healthcare regulators on OET’s own list that publish a grade, 58 require B in all four sub-tests. Believing otherwise is how candidates book a re-sit they never needed.
Speaking, by a distance. Writing, least of all.
Counted across the same 131 regulators, one sub-test per row. This is the reverse of how most candidates ration their preparation, and it is the most useful thing on this page: the sub-test with the least room for a bad day is the one that is hardest to practise alone.
| Sub-test | Require B or better | Accept below B |
|---|---|---|
| Speaking | 112 | 19 |
| Listening | 87 | 44 |
| Reading | 72 | 58 |
| Writing | 60 | 70 |
Read it as a ranking, not as four separate facts. What that means for how you prepare.
There is no single OET requirement. There are 12 of them.
Each row is a distinct set of grades some regulator asks for. The 6 shown here cover 125 of the 131 regulators; the remaining 6 are one-offs, listed under the table. Grade B is 350–440 on the 0–500 scale; C+ is 300–340. A dash means that board publishes nothing for that sub-test.
| Listening | Reading | Writing | Speaking | Regulators |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B | B | B | B | 58 |
| C+ | C+ | C+ | B | 24 |
| B | C+ | C+ | B | 15 |
| B | B | C+ | B | 12 |
| C+ | C+ | C+ | C+ | 11 |
| C | C | C | C | 5 |
A further 6 regulators each ask for something no other board does — among them Speech Pathology Australia, which wants Grade A in Reading, Writing and Speaking. If your board is one of those, the table above will mislead you and the per-country pages below will not.
12 regulators accept OET without saying what they want.
OET lists these as recognising the test but publishes no grade for them. There is no honest way to fill that in, so we do not: the only source is the board itself.
- Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) United Kingdom
- Medical Council of Ireland Ireland
- Alberta College of Pharmacy Canada
- Alberta College of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists (ACSLPA) Canada
- College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of Alberta Canada
- College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of Manitoba Canada
- College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of Saskatchewan Canada
- CORU - Regulating Health and Social Care Professional Ireland
- Louisiana State Board of Nursing United States
- Minnesota Board of Nursing United States
- Pennsylvania State Board of Medicine United States
- State Board of Nursing Pennsylvania United States
The same question, answered one destination at a time.
Every profession-and-country combination OET publishes a gating body for, with the grade each board requires per sub-test, split into the boards that register you and the departments that admit you.
- Compiled from OET's own list of recognising organisations, captured 2026-08-21 and re-scraped weekly. Confirm with your regulator before booking — a board can change its requirement between our refresh and your application.
- Counts on this page cover healthcare regulators only. Visa and immigration departments publish their own thresholds and they are frequently different — why meeting one does not settle the other.
Know the grade. Now go and get it.
Speaking is where regulators bend least and where practice is hardest to arrange. Run a real five-minute role-play against an AI patient and get all nine OET criteria scored about a minute after you finish.
On Android, Windows or a Mac? The app is iPhone-only for now — but you can hear a full role-play, scored turn by turn, right here.
Listen to a scored role-play
iPhone · iOS 16 or later. Android is not out yet.
Not installing today?Want the 60 minutes waiting when you do get an iPhone? Leave your email — 60 free practice minutes (≈ 12 role-plays) go on the account you create.