When children are regarded as vessels to be filled with facts, creativity does not prosper; nor does it when teachers' sole objective is coaching children towards exams.
Well, it depends on the circumstances. Often, if a student has been ill or had personal problems, they can take a year off-and then, redo exams and rejoin the course where they left off.
Even if you can't bring your card with you into the test, you spend a concentrated block of time selecting and writing down the most crucial information.
You probably know that IELTS is scored from zero to nine, where zero means you just didn't turn up for the exam, and nine means you sound like a native speaker; there's no difference.