The OET (Occupational English Test): a guide for Australia

The OET, or Occupational English Test, is an English test made for health professionals. It has four parts, Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking, and you can sit it on paper, on computer at a venue, or at home. OET publishes test dates and booking deadlines on its own booking page.

OET stands for Occupational English Test. The organisation behind the test also calls itself OET, and it describes the test as made for healthcare professionals. It checks your English in a work setting. It does not check your medical knowledge.

OET says the test is designed to assess English language ability, not medical knowledge. It is tailored to twelve professions: medicine, nursing, dentistry, dietetics, pharmacy, physiotherapy, podiatry, radiology, occupational therapy, veterinary science, optometry and speech pathology.

Two of the four parts are the same for everyone. The other two are written for your own profession, so a nurse and a pharmacist read and speak about different cases.

The OET is not for everyone. OET says that if you are not a health professional, it may not suit you.

This guide is not registration or immigration advice. OET's pages, your regulator's pages and the Department of Home Affairs decide, and they change.

You sit four parts, which OET calls sub-tests. This is how OET describes each one at a glance.

Listening

• Listening has 42 marks: Part A is worth 24, Part B is worth 6 and Part C is worth 12.
• You hear each part once only, so you write your answers as you listen.
• On paper you get two minutes at the end to check all three parts. On computer there is a short pause after each question instead.
• The recordings use a range of accents, mainly Australian, British and American, with others including New Zealand, Irish, Canadian and South African.

Reading

• Reading has 42 marks: Part A is worth 20, Part B is worth 6 and Part C is worth 16.
• Part A is a strict timed task. The papers are collected after 15 minutes, and you cannot go back to them.
• Spelling must be correct in Reading, and abbreviations are accepted only if they appear in the texts.

Writing

• You get five minutes of reading time at the start, then 40 minutes to write and check your letter.
• The task has a word range of 180 to 200 words. There is no automatic penalty for going over or under it, but OET says each task is designed to be done in that range.
• Two OET assessors mark the letter on six criteria: purpose, content, conciseness and clarity, genre and style, organisation and layout, and language.

Speaking

• You do two role plays with an interlocutor, who plays your patient or their carer. Each role play lasts about five minutes.
• You get three minutes to prepare for each one, with all the information on a role-play card. You may write on the card and look at it during the role play, then hand it back.
• The role plays are recorded and assessed by two OET assessors, using OET's Linguistic and Clinical Communication Criteria.

OET offers the test in three delivery modes: OET Test on Paper, OET Test on Computer and OET@Home. The test fee OET quotes is the same for all three. What changes is where you sit, how you write, how you do Speaking and how soon results come.

Our reading of the difference in practice. On paper you write the letter by hand and sit Speaking in a room with a person. On computer you type the letter, and OET says candidates who prefer to type may find that more comfortable.

On computer, the Listening, Reading and Writing parts are on one day, and Speaking can be on a different day. OET's computer page and booking FAQ say up to 5 days before or after, subject to availability, while its test regulations say usually 8 days before or after, so treat 5 days as the limit. The regulations also say that if you do not take Speaking within the allowed window you forfeit it and receive a score of 0. OET says the timing does not change your results.

Who can sit which mode

OET's paper page contradicts itself on this. Its list of who can sit on paper names seven professions: medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, radiology and veterinary science. The FAQ on the same page says both modes are open to all twelve. The dates table below shows which professions each paper date serves, so read that line for your own date before you pay.

OET@Home

OET@Home is offered where a venue is not yet available, and OET also pitches it to people who prefer convenience or cannot reach a nearby centre. For Australian visas, Home Affairs does not accept it.

OET's own words: it is offered in countries where taking the test at a venue is not yet available, and not all regulators accept it.

Home Affairs names these as examples of online tests it does not accept for Australian visa purposes: CELPIP Online, IELTS Online, LANGUAGECERT Academic Online, MET Digital (taken at-home), OET@Home and TOEFL iBT Home Edition.

Before you pick a mode, ask the body that will read your result which modes it accepts. OET gives you the same advice.

OET publishes its dates in tables on its booking page, split by delivery mode. Each date has its own booking window, its own results date and its own list of professions. You search by city and country.

Computer dates

On the page when we last read it in October 2026, computer dates ran Monday to Saturday, with results published on Fridays. OET says results can come in as little as 48 hours and that 95% arrive within six calendar days, and that results are published no later than the dates in its table. These four rows are examples from that table, not a full calendar.

Paper dates

Paper sittings come about every second week. OET lists a Global set of Saturday dates and a separate Americas set of Friday dates. These are the Global dates that were still open when we read the page in October 2026. Note how the professions change from one date to the next. In these four rows the second and fourth dates are for nursing and medicine only.

Paper bookings close earlier than computer ones, so plan backwards from the date you need your result. OET says paper bookings close 24 days before the test date, subject to change. Computer and OET@Home bookings close 7 days before, at 11:59PM UTC.

Once you are booked, the venue sends you a timetable. For paper, OET says it arrives no later than 48 hours before your test day.

The dates above will age. They show how the table works. The live table on OET's booking page is the one to use.

The rules differ slightly by mode. All of them start with ID. You must use the same ID you booked with.

What counts as ID

• For computer at a venue, OET's test-day page lists a valid passport, but its test regulations also allow a valid national ID. They say a national ID must be issued by the national government of the country where you sit the test and must be in English lettering, and in the same paragraph that a certified translated copy is needed where it is not in English, so those two lines pull against each other. If your ID is not a passport, confirm it with OET before you book, use the same ID you booked with and check OET's ID page before test day.
• For paper, a valid passport, or a valid national ID issued by the government of the country where you sit the test, with your full name, photograph and date of birth.
• A driver's licence is not accepted.

OET says you are responsible for bringing a valid, acceptable ID to the venue. On paper, use a 2B pencil to shade the multiple-choice answers in Listening and Reading Parts B and C, because a computer scans them.

Two answers to one ID question

If OET cannot match your ID, it can hold your results. OET's pages give two different time limits for fixing that. The test-day page gives thirty calendar days from your test day. The test regulations give five calendar days from the date OET contacts you. We cannot tell you which is current, so if OET ever writes to you about your ID, answer on the same day.

There is a lot of free material from OET itself. Start there before you pay anyone. OET also warns about unofficial material.

OET lists free preparation resources. The first ones it names are an Intro to OET online course, an OET Study Guide and a Writing Guide.

OET also sells a course for each part. And it offers a placement test called Pulse, a 30-minute test that gives feedback on how to prepare, so you can find your level first.

Preparation courses and teachers

If you want a teacher, OET lists preparation partners on its own page. It splits them into premium partners and others who have completed only a preliminary OET training program. E2Language is one of the providers on that list, and we link to it with a tracking link only and have no paid arrangement with it at the moment.

We cannot say which course suits you, and we have no evidence ranking providers. Look at the entry level and course length each one states, and ask what profession it teaches.

How long will it take?

In a November 2023 post OET says there is no fixed answer. It depends on your starting level, your weekly study time and your earlier test experience.

OET puts it plainly: there are no shortcuts to passing a high-stakes English test.

Our order of work

1. Take Pulse or a free sample test to find your level, and write down your scores for each part.
2. Find out the score your visa or regulator asks for. Work out the gap for each part.
3. Learn the four parts from OET's free guides before you do any more practice papers.
4. Practise in the mode you will sit. Type if you will type. Write by hand if you will write by hand.
5. Do a full sample test about every two to three weeks, and spend the time between tests fixing what the last one showed.
6. Book when your practice scores sit above the level you need, not when they touch it.

Our OET practice page has a short original set you can use at home, and a guide to OET's free sample tests.

OET says its test is accepted by healthcare boards and councils across Australia and by the Department of Home Affairs. Ahpra, which handles registration, lists the OET as one of its five accepted tests.

OET adds that the department recognises it for visa categories including skilled migration and student visas. Ahpra's own line reads: OET, the Occupational English Test, on paper or computer, in a testing centre.

The scores for each visa level and for Ahpra are on our OET for Australian visas page. The cost is on the OET exam fees page. Our Ahpra English requirements page covers every accepted test.

OET has also started putting Speaking at test venues for some computer candidates. In its list of regions, Australia appears as Melbourne and Sydney.

Common questions