The three pie charts below show the changes in annual spending by a particular UK school in 1981, 1991 and 2001.
Sample Response
The pie charts compare the expenditure of a school in the United Kingdom in three different years - 1981, 1991 and 2001, at ten-year intervalswith a gap of a decade. It is clear from the pie charts that teachers’ salaries accounted for the highest percentage of the school’s expenses in all three years. By contrast, insurance was the smallest cost in each year. DeleteNow turning to the details, In 1981, 40% of the school’s budget went on teachers’ salaries. This figure rose to exactly halfexactly the half of the total expenditureexpense in 1991, before dropping by 5 percentage pointsdropping back by 5% in 2001. The proportion of expenditure on other workers’ wages was considerably lower than that of teachers' salaries and it fell steadily over the 20-year period, from 28% of the budget in 1981 to 15% in 2001. Expenditure on insurance stood at only 2% of the total in 1981, being the lowest percentage of expense for the school, but rose to 8% in 2001. The proportions spent on resources and furniture/equipmentThe expense percentages for resources and furniture/equipment of the school fluctuated. The proportion spent on resourcesThe cost ratio for resources was the highest in 1991, one-fifth of the total cost to be precise, and the percentage of spending on furniture and equipment reached its peak in 2001, at 23%.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response presents an accurate overview and selects the principal spending changes with well-controlled sentence structures and generally precise vocabulary. The main limitation is that the two fluctuating categories are described mainly through their peak years, so their full changes across the three charts remain underdeveloped, while some expressions are awkward. Prioritise a compact comparison of all three values for resources and furniture/equipment.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The overview and reported figures are accurate and cover the dominant and smallest categories, though the fluctuations in resources and furniture/equipment are only partly developed.
State all three values for resources and furniture/equipment to show their opposing changes clearly and completely.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically from overview to detailed trends with effective referencing and linking, but the response is presented as one dense paragraph.
Use a distinct overview paragraph and group related categories into separate detail paragraphs for clearer progression.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and generally precise, although phrases such as 'exactly the half', 'expense percentages' and 'cost ratio' are awkward.
Prefer natural Task 1 collocations such as 'exactly half', 'the proportion spent on' and 'the figure for'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex structures is used accurately, with only isolated slips in articles and capitalisation.
Refine small points such as 'exactly half' and lower-case 'in' after the introductory comma.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The three pie charts below show the changes in annual spending by a particular UK school in 1981, 1991 and 2001.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.