The test was created and promoted by the Instituto Cervantes, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of Salamanca and the University of Buenos Aires in Spain, guaranteeing the quality of the test and its good practice, taking into account linguistic differences in different regions where Spanish is spoken.

SIELE evaluates the level of proficiency in Spanish through four tests, each of which assess different language skills, including reading comprehension, listening comprehension, written expression and oral communication. Different tasks included in each test correspond to different difficulty levels, thereby rating candidates' language proficiency (A1-C1) according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).