Task 1 Academic · Pie chart · Consumer
How household spending changed over thirty years
Two pie charts thirty years apart, where the gains and the losses cancel out exactly — a pattern only one of the three answers notices.
The question
You should spend about 20 minutes on this task. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.
The charts below show how an average household divided its spending between six categories in 1995 and in 2025.
| Category | 1995 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Housing and fuel | 22 | 31 |
| Food and drink | 28 | 17 |
| Transport | 14 | 13 |
| Clothing | 10 | 5 |
| Leisure and eating out | 12 | 19 |
| Other goods and services | 14 | 15 |
A 150-word factual summary of a graph, chart, table, process or map. This prompt is original, written in the standard format for teaching purposes — it is not taken from any past paper.
What separates the three answers
Two categories gained sixteen points and two lost exactly sixteen; the 6.5 answer lists all twelve figures without seeing it, and the band 9 answer opens with it.
The three answers
Band 6.5
178 words (the task asks for at least 150)The answer works. It addresses the task, the reader follows it, and the meaning survives — but ideas stay general, linking is mechanical, wording repeats, and small errors are visible throughout.
The answer
The two pie charts show the information about how the average household spent their money in 1995 and in 2025 on the six different categories.
In 1995, the food and drink was the largest category with 28 per cent of the spending. The housing and fuel was the second with 22 per cent. After that, the transport and the other goods and services was both 14 per cent3, the leisure and eating out was 12 per cent, and the clothing was the smallest with 10 per cent.
On the other hand, in 2025 the housing and fuel became the largest with 31 per cent. The leisure and eating out increased to 19 per cent and the food and drink decreased to 17 per cent.4 The other goods and services was 15 per cent, the transport was 13 per cent and the clothing was only 5 per cent, which is a decrease of 5 per cent1.
Overall, the housing and the leisure increased in this period, but the food and the clothing decreased.2 The transport almost did not change.
What an examiner notices
1. Grammatical range and accuracy
“which is a decrease of 5 per cent”
Clothing fell from 10 per cent to 5 — a fall of five percentage points, or fifty per cent. Confusing points with per cent is the single commonest accuracy error in pie chart answers.
2. Task achievement
“Overall, the housing and the leisure increased in this period, but the food and the clothing decreased.”
Correct, and one step short of the finding: those two rises and those two falls are equal in size, so the budget has been redistributed rather than rearranged at random.
3. Coherence and cohesion
“After that, the transport and the other goods and services was both 14 per cent”
'After that' implies a sequence, but a pie chart has no chronology. The linker has been chosen from habit rather than from meaning.
4. Lexical resource
“The leisure and eating out increased to 19 per cent and the food and drink decreased to 17 per cent.”
The two most significant movements in the data are given the two flattest verbs available, and the full category names are repeated rather than shortened.
One honest caveat
Band labels here describe what each piece of writing demonstrates against the four published assessment areas, paraphrased in plain language. They are teaching illustrations produced for this site, not official material, and no sample has been marked by a test provider. Real scripts are marked whole; two answers with the same label can still look quite different from each other, and nothing on this page can promise anyone a particular result.
Compare another question
- Task 1 Academic · Pie chart
Energy use in an older and a newly built house
Two pie charts with very different totals, where a slice that doubles can stand for the same energy — and only the band 9 answer converts shares into kilowatt-hours consistently.
- Task 1 Academic · Pie chart
Office, hybrid and remote working at one company
Three pie charts in which a dramatic middle year turns out to be the least lasting change — the answers differ in whether they see that the real winner grew only afterwards.
- Task 1 Academic · Pie chart
Where a city's household waste ended up
Two pie charts in which landfill loses its lead to recycling, and in which the quiet growth of incineration is the detail only one answer weighs.