TEF re-evaluation: the re-mark you are looking for does not exist
Almost every page ranking for “TEF re-evaluation” describes a paid re-marking service with a €50 fee and a 90 day window. That policy was withdrawn. What Le français des affaires offers today is a free appeal, open only where something went wrong during your session, and winning it cancels the certificate you already hold. Here is the current policy in full, and the retake maths that usually beats it.
The short answer
There is no TEF re-evaluation. Le français des affaires does not sell a re-marking of your answers, at any price. The one mechanism that exists is a demande de recours, an appeal that costs nothing, must be filed from your candidate account within 30 days of your attestation being issued, and is accepted only where a serious anomaly or malfunction happened during the session. Even when it succeeds, your marks are not changed: you are offered a free re-sit of the affected section, and your existing scores and certificate are permanently cancelled. If your expression orale simply came back lower than you hoped, the honest answer is that an appeal has no path to fixing it, and a prepared retake does.
The current policy at a glance
Everything below comes from the official appeal page and the terms of registration published by Le français des affaires, the CCI Paris Île-de-France body that owns and marks the TEF. It applies to every TEF version, including TEF Canada, TEF Québec and TEF Études.
It is free
Le français des affaires states plainly that the appeal is free: "La demande de recours est gratuite." There is no longer any paid re-marking product for the TEF.
Anomaly only, and only that
The published ground is a serious anomaly or malfunction during your session, "dans ce cas et dans ce seul cas". A score that feels too low is not a ground.
30 days from the certificate
The deadline runs 30 days from the date your attestation de résultats was issued, not from your test date. Eligible sittings appear automatically in your candidate account.
Answer within 2 weeks
The published turnaround is a reply from Le français des affaires within two weeks of receiving the request.
You get a re-sit, not a new mark
Even when an anomaly is confirmed, your results are not modified. You are offered a free re-sit of the affected section or sections, normally within three months.
A successful appeal voids your scores
Once the appeal procedure is accepted and completed, your old scores and certificate are permanently cancelled, whatever the new results turn out to be.
Read this twice before you file. The terms state that once the appeal procedure is accepted and completed, your previous scores, and therefore your attestation, are definitively cancelled, whatever the new results are. If three of your four abilities are already at the level you need, a granted appeal puts all four back on the table. There is no version of this where you keep the good scores and only re-do the bad one.
Why so many pages tell you it costs €50
Until a few years ago the CCI candidate manuals really did describe a paid results review: 90 days to apply, €50 online, four weeks to process, refunded if the certificate was revised. That regime is gone, and the current anomaly-only wording has been on the official site since at least December 2024. The old text never got cleaned up on hundreds of third-party pages, and, more awkwardly, it is still sitting on the TEF pages of genuine accredited centres, including university continuing-education departments in Canada. If you found the €50 figure on a page that looked official, this is why.
You can pay about €50 to have your TEF re-marked.
There is no paid re-marking product for the TEF today. The official appeal page states the request is free. The €50 that still circulates matches the price of a paper duplicate of your results certificate in the CCI shop, and it was the fee under a candidate-manual regime that has since been withdrawn.
You have 90 days to request a review.
The current deadline is 30 days from the date your attestation was issued. The 90-day figure comes from the same withdrawn regime and is still printed on the TEF pages of real accredited centres, which is why it keeps spreading.
The fee is refunded if your score goes up.
A refund rule made sense when a paid review existed. Nothing is re-scored now, so there is nothing to refund. Do not plan around it.
You can appeal just the expression orale and keep everything else.
A granted appeal is scoped to the section affected by the anomaly, but the published terms say the old scores and the certificate as a whole are cancelled once the procedure is accepted and completed. Treat your whole result as being at stake.
Each test centre has its own re-evaluation policy and its own fee.
Centres do not mark the TEF and do not set appeal policy. Your answers are graded centrally by CCI Paris Île-de-France, and the appeal is filed to Le français des affaires through your candidate account. A centre advertising its own review fee is out of date or is not an accredited centre at all.
How to file a demande de recours, step by step
The whole thing happens in your own candidate account and costs nothing. The hard part is the first step, because that is where most requests are decided.
- 1
Check that you actually have a ground
Something must have gone wrong during the session itself: a broken headset, audio that cut out, a station that crashed, a timer that ran short, a disruption in the room. The stricter wording in the terms of registration says the anomaly should have been observed and escalated by the accredited centre at the time. If nothing went wrong and you simply disagree with the mark, an appeal will not get you a re-mark.
- 2
Contact your test centre first
Le français des affaires asks candidates to speak to their centre of passation before anything else. The centre is also the party that reports session anomalies upstream, so getting your case on their record matters.
- 3
Sign in to your candidate account
The request is filed by you, from your account on the Le français des affaires candidate portal. It is not an email and not a paper form, and your test centre cannot file it on your behalf. Sittings still inside the 30-day window appear automatically.
- 4
Submit the appeal and describe the anomaly
Set out exactly what happened, when, and who at the centre you told. There is no fee to pay. You can then follow the status of the request from the same account.
- 5
Expect a reply within two weeks, and plan around it
If the appeal is refused, nothing changes. If it is accepted, you re-sit the affected section free of charge and your previous certificate is cancelled. Because a refusal is the common outcome, most candidates are better off booking a retake in parallel rather than waiting.
Why refusals are the normal outcome
Expression écrite and expression orale are double marked by design. The published process has each written production assessed by two independent trained correctors, and each speaking performance assessed first by the examiner in the centre and then by a second evaluator working from the recording. A second opinion is not something you have to ask for; it already happened. That is the reasoning behind the policy, and it is what candidates who file on score grounds are typically told when their request comes back refused, sometimes within a day. Filing costs you nothing but the time, so if you had a genuine anomaly, file. Just do not build your immigration timeline on it.
Before you appeal: your score is probably not wrong, you may be reading the wrong column
Since the December 2023 format change, a TEF Canada attestation carries results on a 0 to 699 scale as well as an Équivalence ancien scorecolumn. IRCC is blunt about which one counts: enter only the Équivalence ancien score values in your Express Entry profile, and do not enter the /699 results, because they are not compatible with the system. Entering the wrong numbers can get an application refused. A great many “my TEF score is wrong” posts are this, not a marking error.
| NCLC / CLB | SpeakingExpression orale, /450 | WritingExpression écrite, /450 | ListeningCompréhension orale, /360 | ReadingCompréhension écrite, /300 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 393–450 | 393–450 | 316–360 | 263–300 |
| 9 | 371–392 | 371–392 | 298–315 | 248–262 |
| 8 | 349–370 | 349–370 | 280–297 | 233–247 |
| 7 | 310–348 | 310–348 | 249–279 | 207–232 |
| 6 | 271–309 | 271–309 | 217–248 | 181–206 |
| 5 | 226–270 | 226–270 | 181–216 | 151–180 |
| 4 | 181–225 | 181–225 | 145–180 | 121–150 |
If you sat the TEF between 11 December 2023 and 6 May 2024, check your inbox. IRCC has published that the CCI temporarily changed how NCLC levels were reported during that window and later reverted it, emailing affected candidates their updated score. If your Express Entry profile still carries the old numbers and you are invited to apply, IRCC warns the application could be refused. That is a correction you make yourself, not something an appeal handles.
When an appeal makes sense, and when it does not
File it when
- Your headset, microphone, screen or workstation failed during the exam, or the audio was inaudible or cut off.
- The session was disrupted: an evacuation, a power cut, noise that made the listening section unusable, an examiner interruption.
- You were given less time than the official duration of a section, or the test software crashed and you lost work.
- You reported the problem to the invigilator at the time, ideally with an incident note from the centre, so your account matches theirs.
- You are still inside 30 days of the date your attestation was issued, and you can accept losing your current certificate if the appeal succeeds.
Skip it when
- The exam ran normally and you just believe the mark on expression écrite or expression orale is too harsh. That is not an appealable ground.
- You already hold usable scores in the other abilities. A granted appeal cancels the entire certificate, so a re-sit could leave you worse off than you are now.
- You need the score by a specific date. Two weeks for an answer plus a re-sit within three months is slower than simply booking another sitting.
- Your real problem is reading the wrong column of your attestation. Fix that first, before you file anything.
Appeal vs retaking the TEF
These are not really alternatives, because only one of them can raise a mark. Seeing them side by side still helps, because the appeal carries a risk the retake does not.
| Demande de recours | Retake | |
|---|---|---|
| What you actually get | A free re-sit of the affected section if a serious anomaly is confirmed. Never a new mark on the answers you already gave. | A fresh sitting of the full package, marked normally. |
| Cost | Free | Around CAD $390 for the four-module TEF Canada at Alliance Française centres in Canada; roughly CAD $195 to $200 for the two-module version |
| Timing | Answer within about 2 weeks; a granted re-sit is normally scheduled within 3 months | A 20-day waiting period between two sittings of the same test, then results in about 1 to 10 business days |
| Risk to your current scores | High. A completed, accepted appeal cancels your existing certificate whatever the new results are | None. Your existing attestation stays valid for two years and you can keep using it |
| Realistic odds | Publicly shared outcomes are dominated by refusals, usually with a reply noting the section was already double marked | Entirely in your hands, which is exactly why it is the more reliable option |
TEF vs TCF: only one of them ever had a real re-mark
The TEF and the TCF are different exams run by different organisations, and their review policies have nothing in common. Most of the confusing advice online is TCF information filed under a TEF heading. Note the deadline in the last row: Canadian test centres have announced that the TCF route is closing too.
TEF, run by CCI Paris Île-de-France
- No re-marking of your answers, at any price
- Free appeal, 30 days from the certificate date
- Granted only for a serious session anomaly
- Remedy is a free re-sit; old certificate cancelled
- Answer within about two weeks
TCF, run by France Éducation international
- A genuine paid re-marking of writing and speaking
- Requested through your test centre, roughly CAD $90 to $200 per section
- About 30 days to request, four to six weeks to process
- The revised score can be higher or lower than the original
- Canadian centres have announced it is not accepted for exams taken on or after 1 September 2026
The full picture, with the fees by centre and the closing date, is in our TCF re-evaluation guide. For English tests, Paragon does offer a paid re-rating of the human marked sections; see the CELPIP re-evaluation guide.
What one extra NCLC level is actually worth
This is the number that makes people consider an appeal in the first place. It is worth pricing properly, because it is also the number that justifies paying for another sitting.
NCLC 8 to NCLC 9, one ability
Without a spouse, a single ability moving from CLB 8 to CLB 9 goes from 23 to 31 first language points on its own.
Crossing CLB 9 everywhere
Skill transferability combinations with education and foreign work experience jump once your lowest ability reaches CLB 9, and together they can add up to 50 more points.
French bonus at NCLC 7
NCLC 7 or higher in all four French abilities is the threshold for the additional points for French-language ability, and it is what French-language draws are built around.
Run your own numbers before deciding anything: convert your attestation with the CLB converter, then see what one more level does to your total in the CRS calculator and check the recent cutoffs in the Express Entry draw history.
TEF re-evaluation FAQ
Is there a TEF Canada re-evaluation?
Not in the sense most people mean. Le français des affaires does not offer a paid re-marking of your TEF answers. The only mechanism is a demande de recours, an appeal that is free, must be filed within 30 days of your attestation being issued, and is accepted only where a serious anomaly or malfunction occurred during the session. Its remedy is a free re-sit of the affected section, not a new mark on what you already wrote or said.
How much does a TEF re-evaluation cost?
Nothing. The official appeal page states that the demande de recours is free. If a site quotes you €50, it is repeating a withdrawn policy from older CCI candidate manuals. Several real accredited centres, including university continuing-education departments, still publish that stale text on their TEF pages, so seeing it on an official-looking page does not make it current.
Can I appeal because my expression orale score is too low?
The published ground does not cover it. The policy says an appeal is possible where a serious anomaly or malfunction occurred during the session, "in this case and in this case only". Disagreeing with a mark is not an anomaly. Test takers who file on that basis commonly report a refusal, often with a reply pointing out that the section was already assessed by two independent evaluators.
What is the deadline for a TEF appeal?
Thirty days, counted from the date your attestation de résultats was issued, not from your test date. Eligible sittings appear automatically in your candidate account for that window.
How long does a TEF appeal take?
Le français des affaires states you will receive a reply within two weeks of the request being received. If the appeal is granted, the free re-sit of the affected section is normally offered within three months.
Can a TEF appeal lower my score?
Not directly, because nothing is re-marked. The risk is different and larger: once an appeal is accepted and completed, your previous scores and certificate are permanently cancelled, whatever the new results are. If you re-sit and score lower, you cannot fall back on the old attestation. That is the single most important thing to understand before filing.
Who re-marks a TEF appeal?
Nobody. That is the point of the policy. Expression écrite and expression orale are already double marked as standard: the writing by two independent trained correctors, the speaking by the examiner in the centre and then by a second evaluator working from the recording. Because a second opinion is already built into every result, Le français des affaires offers a re-sit for session anomalies rather than a third look at the same performance.
Can I see my written answers or listen to my speaking recording?
No. The published results policy states that candidates are not given access to their written production or the recording of their oral production, and no detailed feedback on the marking is provided. There is no evidence file to build an argument on, which is another reason appeals on score grounds go nowhere.
Why does my TEF score look so different from what I expected?
Usually because of which column you are reading. Since the December 2023 format change, your attestation shows scores on a 0 to 699 scale as well as an "Équivalence ancien score" column. IRCC instructs Express Entry candidates to enter only the Équivalence ancien score values, and explicitly says not to enter the /699 numbers. A reading of 480 out of 699 looks alarming next to a benchmark expressed out of 300 or 450, but it is not a marking error.
How soon can I retake the TEF?
The terms of registration set a 20-day waiting period between two sittings of the same TEF test, all versions combined, and warn that a registration breaking that rule will be cancelled. It is 20 days for the TEF, not the 30 days that blogs often repeat by borrowing the TCF re-evaluation window.
Can I retake only the section I need?
For TEF Canada in Canada, no. Alliance Française centres sell the four-module package for permanent residence and a two-module package for citizenship or Mobilité francophone, and you sit the whole package you registered for. You cannot buy a single expression orale retake to patch one weak ability.
How long are TEF results valid for immigration?
The attestation is valid for two years from its date of issue, and IRCC requires your results to be less than two years old both when you complete your Express Entry profile and when you submit your application for permanent residence.
Does the TCF have a real re-evaluation instead?
It did, and that is why so much "TEF re-evaluation" content online is really TCF information under the wrong heading. France Éducation international allowed a paid re-marking of the TCF writing and speaking sections. However, Canadian test centres including Alliance Française Ottawa and Concordia have announced that re-evaluation requests will no longer be accepted for TCF exams taken on or after 1 September 2026. Check our TCF re-evaluation guide for the current position before you count on it.
What should I do if I am one NCLC level short?
Confirm you are reading the correct column, then book a retake and prepare specifically for the weak ability. An appeal has no path to raising a mark and can cost you the certificate you already hold. A retake keeps your existing scores intact until better ones arrive, and after the 20-day waiting period it is also the faster route.
Policies and centre fees change. Everything here reflects what Le français des affaires, IRCC and Canadian test centres published as of July 2026; always confirm the current rules on the official pages before you act.
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