Many Express Entry profiles from India and Pakistan stall at the same two points: the educational credential assessment and the language test result. Both are proof documents rather than scores, and both carry their own expiry date, running on clocks that do not match each other.
This guide is written for someone preparing an Express Entry profile who was educated outside Canada and whose first language is not English or French. It sets out what each document requires and how the two timelines interact. It does not cover how the profile itself is scored; the CRS calculator on this site can be used for that.
Every profile is different, and a credential, a professional licence, or a test result can raise a question specific to one person's situation. This guide explains the general rules. It is not a substitute for advice about your own documents.
What does an educational credential assessment do?
An educational credential assessment, or ECA, is a report that states what a foreign degree, diploma or certificate is equivalent to under Canadian standards. Express Entry uses this report to award points for education, since a degree earned outside Canada has no automatic Canadian equivalent on file.
The assessment has to come from an organisation designated for immigration purposes, not from a general credential evaluation service chosen at random. Using the wrong organisation means the report cannot be used in the profile at all.
Which organisation can issue the assessment
Five organisations are designated to issue an educational credential assessment for Express Entry. They are the Comparative Education Service, International Credential Assessment Service of Canada, World Education Services, International Qualifications Assessment Service and International Credential Evaluation Service. Any one of the five can be used for a general assessment. A report from an organisation outside this list is not accepted, no matter how similar it looks to one that is.
Architects, doctors and pharmacists are the exception. Their credentials are also assessed for professional licensing, so they need the designated professional body for their profession, not one of the five general organisations.
How long the assessment stays valid
An educational credential assessment report has to be less than 5 years old when the Express Entry profile is completed. It also has to be less than 5 years old when the application for permanent residence is eventually submitted. A report obtained early and then left unused for several years can expire before it is needed.
Where that happens, a new assessment has to be obtained from a designated organisation before the profile or application can rely on it again.
Which language test to take
For English, Express Entry accepts CELPIP-General, IELTS General Training and PTE Core. For French, it accepts TEF Canada and TCF Canada. A test taken for another purpose, such as academic admission, is not automatically accepted just because it measures the same language.
This matters most for IELTS. Express Entry requires the General Training version specifically, not the Academic version, and the shorter IELTS One Skill Retake product is not accepted at all. Someone who already holds an IELTS Academic result from a university application will need to sit General Training separately. The two versions are not interchangeable for Express Entry purposes.
How long does a language test result stay valid?
A language test result has to be less than 2 years old, again both when the profile is completed and when the application is submitted. This is a shorter window than the educational assessment's, and it runs from the test date rather than from any other milestone.
The two documents run on different clocks. So a profile built around an ECA obtained several years earlier can still fail if the language test behind it has since expired, even though the ECA itself remains valid.
The short version
- An educational credential assessment has to come from one of five designated organisations, or from the designated professional body for architects, doctors and pharmacists.
- The assessment report has to be less than 5 years old at both profile completion and application submission.
- Express Entry accepts CELPIP-General, IELTS General Training and PTE Core for English, and TEF Canada and TCF Canada for French.
- IELTS specifically means General Training, not Academic, and the One Skill Retake product is not accepted.
- Language test results have to be less than 2 years old, a shorter window than the educational assessment's. So the two documents need to be tracked on separate timelines.
Every figure on this page is cited to the government source it was read from, and was checked on September 17, 2026. Rules change, and a source is the authority where this page and the source disagree. This guide is general information about how the process works, not immigration advice about your own situation, and reading it creates no consultant-client relationship.