The recent news that two of the most popular English-language proficiency tests in Japan can no longer be accepted as prerequisites for student visas to Britain may have come as a shock to students, parents and test administrators. But the exams have long been suspected of having problems, even as they proliferated.
The refusal to accept TOEIC and TOEFL exams were the result of the uncovering of fraud at a testing center by a BBC program. It will be hard to calculate the loss of confidence in such exams that will result from the BBC's reporting.
The announcement should also come as a bit of an embarrassment to the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who recently suggested the possibility of using the two exams as part of the admission and graduation requirements for Japanese universities.