ICAS Exams – International Competitions & Assessments for Schools

The International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) are independent skills-based assessments with a competition element. Commonly referred to as the UNSW tests, ICAS is unique, being the most comprehensive generally available suite of academic assessments and school tests for primary and secondary school students. The assessments comprise eight Digital Technologies tests, eleven English tests, eleven Maths tests, eleven Science tests, five Spelling tests and ten Writing tests.

A new ICAS test is developed annually for each subject in each year level by our team of subject matter experts. All ICAS tests are reviewed by experienced teachers to ensure that they accurately assess students’ skills and are relevant to what they are learning at school. Some schools use ICAS as a placement test. Other schools use ICAS results as a component of  a student’s overall academic achievement for the year. While still others offer ICAS as a psychometric test to better understand what students can and can’t do at a point in time.

Each test is sat at the student’s school and is invigilated by teachers under normal examination conditions.

Administration Guidelines are provided to the schools with the ICAS papers to ensure that the same conditions are afforded to all students sitting ICAS.

Over one million student entries are accepted from over 6,300 schools in Australia and New Zealand annually. In addition, students from over 20 countries including Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and the USA participate in ICAS each year.

ICAS 2020

The dates for the 2020 examinations are below.

Science – Wednesday 14 October 2020

Digital Technologies  – Thursday 15 October 2020

Mathematics –  Wednesday 21 October 2020

English –  Thursday 22 October 2020

Practice Test – Online Practice Interaction test:

Use the free online ICAS Practice Interaction Test   to become familiar with how to: 

• navigate through a test
• answer questions
• scroll and expand parts of the screen
• use the online ruler and calculator