The question here is 'why' are all these students suddenly exposed to a
difficult IELTS test halfway through a semester?

Control of the school is a mysterious matrix between the strange Canadian 'founder', the SCIC Dean and the administrators of Xida. The SCIC Chinese staff and teachers can barely hide their contempt for the Chinese Canadian founder who is Trump-like in his arrogance and self-promotion. I suspect that seniors members of Xida feel the same way about him, and perhaps about SCIC itself.

The Dean, a lovely woman, has visions of SCIC becoming a genuine preparatory college for students to study overseas. Given that essentially the entire student body has no intent to study overseas and SCIC's one marketing point is entry into Xida, this is a delusion.

The founder/buffoon's income is generated predominately by the affiliated IELTS company. All Chinese students are grade fanatics; many seek IELTS classes to improve their internal SCIC grades.

Students taking 'IELTS-lite' exams feeds both the Dean's hopeless aspirations and the founder's purse.