What the examiner is looking for
Before you write anything, understand what is being marked. Pie chart reports are assessed on four criteria, each worth 25% of your Task 1 score. Most students lose marks on the first two — not because of bad English, but because of bad decisions made before they start writing.
The three rules that separate Band 6 from Band 8
Rule 1: You must write an overview. The overview is a short paragraph — two or three sentences — that captures the dominant categories and the key shift between charts. No specific figures. Just the big picture. Missing the overview drops your Task Achievement score immediately. It is the single most important paragraph in your report.
Rule 2: Describe proportions, do not list every percentage. The examiner has the pie chart in front of them. They do not need you to copy every number. What they want is your ability to identify patterns and describe relative sizes. "Accounted for nearly a third" tells more than "was 32%." Group segments by size or direction of change.
Rule 3: Group related segments — do not go clockwise around the pie. Do not describe each segment in the order it appears on the chart. The best structure groups segments by what they have in common — categories that grew together, categories that shrank, dominant versus minor segments. The data decides the structure.
The most common mistake I see in pie chart reports is students listing every single percentage in order. "Housing was 32%. Food was 29%. Transport was 14%..." That reads like a data table, not an analysis. The examiner already has the numbers. Your job is to show you can see the patterns behind the numbers.
Now let us write one — step by step
Below is a real IELTS-style pie chart task. We are going to write a complete Band 8 report on it, one paragraph at a time. At each step, you will see exactly which part of the data we are looking at and why we are making the choices we make.
Do not start writing yet. Look at both pie charts and ask: what changed? What stayed the same? IELTS task designers always build a clear shift into the data. Find it.
The story: Necessities (housing and food) dominated in 2005 but shrank by 2020. Services (education and transport) grew to fill that gap. That contrast is the entire structure of your report. You just found it in 30 seconds.
The introduction paraphrases the task prompt. You are not adding analysis here — just showing the examiner that you understood what the charts are about. Change the wording enough to demonstrate real comprehension, not just synonym swapping.
The two pie charts illustrate how household spending patterns in Iran changed between 2005 and 2020, broken down into six categories.
Notice: "compare" became "illustrate how... changed", "expenditure" became "spending patterns", and we added "broken down into six categories" to show full comprehension. Same information, genuine paraphrasing.
The overview captures the big picture. This is the most important paragraph in your entire report. Two or three sentences. No specific figures. Just the shape of what changed.
Overall, housing and food were the dominant spending categories in both years, although their combined share declined noticeably by 2020. In contrast, education and transport both grew as a proportion of household spending, reflecting a shift away from basic necessities toward services.
No numbers. No percentages. Just the shape of what changed — the big categories shrank, the smaller ones grew — and the most important observation (the shift from necessities to services) called out directly. That is exactly what the examiner is looking for.
We identified two groups earlier. Start with the categories whose share decreased — Housing, Food, and Other. This paragraph needs specific figures and proportion language.
In 2005, housing accounted for nearly a third of all household spending at 32%, making it the single largest category. By 2020, its share had fallen to 28%, though it remained the dominant expense. Food experienced an even more pronounced decline, dropping from 29% to just over a fifth of total expenditure. Miscellaneous spending also contracted slightly, from 10% to 8%.
Three categories. Each described with proportion language — "nearly a third", "just over a fifth" — not just raw percentages. The paragraph groups them by the pattern they share (all decreased) and uses comparisons ("even more pronounced decline") to connect the data points.
Now the opposite group. Transport, Education, and Healthcare all grew — but by different amounts. That difference is what makes this paragraph interesting.
Conversely, the share of spending on education almost doubled over the fifteen-year period, rising from 8% to 15%, making it the fastest-growing category. Transport also expanded its share, climbing from 14% to 18%, while healthcare saw a more modest increase, edging up from 7% to 9% of total household expenditure.
"Conversely" links this paragraph to the previous one — that is cohesion. Education is highlighted as the fastest-growing category, and "almost doubled" is more insightful than "increased by 7 percentage points." Each category is described with a different verb to show lexical range.
The difference this makes
Here is the same housing data described two different ways. Same chart, same numbers. One reads like a data table. The other reads like an analysis.
"Housing was 32% in 2005. In 2020, housing was 28%. Food was 29% in 2005. In 2020, food was 22%. Transport was 14% in 2005. In 2020, transport was 18%. Education was 8% in 2005. In 2020, education was 15%."
"Housing and food, which together accounted for over 60% of spending in 2005, saw their combined share fall to half by 2020. In contrast, education almost doubled its proportion, becoming a significant expense category alongside transport."
The complete report — all together
Here is the full report we just built, assembled into a single piece. Four paragraphs. Around 185 words. Clear, organised, accurate. This is what a Band 8 pie chart report looks like.
The two pie charts illustrate how household spending patterns in Iran changed between 2005 and 2020, broken down into six categories.
Overall, housing and food were the dominant spending categories in both years, although their combined share declined noticeably by 2020. In contrast, education and transport both grew as a proportion of household spending, reflecting a shift away from basic necessities toward services.
In 2005, housing accounted for nearly a third of all household spending at 32%, making it the single largest category. By 2020, its share had fallen to 28%, though it remained the dominant expense. Food experienced an even more pronounced decline, dropping from 29% to just over a fifth of total expenditure. Miscellaneous spending also contracted slightly, from 10% to 8%.
Conversely, the share of spending on education almost doubled over the fifteen-year period, rising from 8% to 15%, making it the fastest-growing category. Transport also expanded its share, climbing from 14% to 18%, while healthcare saw a more modest increase, edging up from 7% to 9% of total household expenditure.
Read that report again. It is 185 words. Four paragraphs. No wasted sentences. Every paragraph has a clear job — introduce, overview, decreasing group, increasing group. That is what structure looks like when you let the data guide you. You do not need a template. You need to read the charts.