This site have been very helpful with my own path to securing an Australian PR Visa (189) and thus I am taking some time to provide some tips or just my own experience throughout the whole process. I can say that my whole journey to securing the PR would have not lasted as long as it did if not for IELTS, so I do have a very strong opinion about it. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying IELTS is terribly bad, not at all. In fact if you need just 6 or 7 points then i believe it is quite easy for "most" Pinoys to achieve that band.
The issue with me is that I am over 40 years old during the time of EOI submission and so my claimed points for age reduced from 25 to 15, which leaves me with just 55 points if I can't get a Superior English Test Score. For IELTS it means I need to score 8 in all the modules.
And so I took IELTS 3 times every time scoring Overall 8 but cant get 8 in both the Speaking and Writing modules. In my opinion those 2 modules are very subjective to grade. I fancied myself to be a good English writer and without boasting, I do received good compliments and good grades in my essays and reports during my MBA days and even as early as high school. I even went to the extreme of hiring a personal tutor for writing and speaking and that tutor was really impressed with me to the point of saying that She see's me as a 9 band candidate. And what did I got in Writing when I took the test after I employed a tutor? 6.5. the lowest mark I have for writing in all my 3 takes 🙂
I definitely can vouch for PTE-A as you can see from my results below. I did reviewed hard, bought the official reviewer and 2 online simulation tests. I believe the online simulation tests are very very good and highly recommended. I did not scored as high as I did in the actual results on those simulation tests but it did gave me a feeling of confidence and thinking to myself "this is doable".
I agree with other guys saying that they think the PTE-A is more lenient in their scoring and so those who are having a hard time to get the score that you need, give up n IELTS and go for PTE.