IAS FAQs

What exactly is IAIS/IAS? IAIS/IAS is a valuable educational assessment tool providing a comprehensive diagnostic assessment of each student's strengths and weaknesses in their academic skills. The reports also show their comparative performance in the context of their school and region. Taking these assessments likely to burden the student with more stress? Results of these assessments focus on revealing the participating student's strengths and weaknesses in academic skills. It is not a milestone prescription for further studies. Therefore these assessments are completely stress-free. On the contrary, they help the students discover their current achievement levels and realize their potential to achieve future goals. It is not so much about competing, but the unrealistic parental expectation on extraordinary results that creates stress. What is a greater challenge to educationists is creating awareness in adults so that they do not pass their stress to children. Understanding the diagnosis is likely to improve the way students approach the learning process.

Can you test students of different education boards on the same parameters? The essential learning outcomes of any syllabi at each level are largely the same. Since we are not assessing the rote learning of content, it does not matter which syllabus the student is working with. Besides, when students finally step out of their school clusters to follow higher education, don't they fall in line with the learning patterns prevalent universally? Will students have a specific book or study materials to learn from? No. The skills being tested will be reflective of the appropriate level in the learning curve expected to be achieved by the student at the target age group. The questions will be based on the universal curricular and co-curricular syllabi including textbooks, lab notes, projects, and other sources. Therefore, the board of examination bears no significance to the levels of achievement in IAS.

Why is it good to take an external assessment? An external assessment removes even a faint trace of subjectivity that stems from familiarity between the teacher and the taught. An external view, especially from a global body reflects a collective, considered, totally objective world view of a student's performance. At the high school level, the students are keen to prepare themselves for competitive examinations. IAS will be a fine prelude to those preparations.

There are other testing services available today. What makes IAIS/IAS different? IAIS/IAS is the most comprehensive assessment program available to schools: IAIS/IAS covers Science, Mathematics, English and Computer Skills IAIS/IAS caters for students of all abilities IAIS/IAS questions use meaningful examples and authentic contexts IAIS/IAS question booklets are presented in a visually appealing way to capture student attention and interest The top performing IAIS/IAS students at each year level from each state, territory or country are awarded University Medals. Other high performing students receive certificates of high distinction, distinction and credit. All students who participate receive a UNSW Certificate acknowledging their achievement. IAIS/IAS is also the only national and international assessment program which enables the tracking of individual student performance and progress from year to year. It is the depth of this information that can help teachers and schools tailor their teaching and learning programs to best meet the needs of their students. Such information also enables parents to know with confidence the level of their child's performance in comparison to their peers in the state, territory or country. IAIS/IAS reports provide more than just information on how individual students perform; schools receive an in-depth report on each year group indicating strengths and weaknesses, comparisons to state grade averages and tracking of year level progress from one year to the next. Participation in IAIS/IAS provides students with valuable practice at taking formal examinations, preparing them for compulsory state-based assessments, assisting them to become more comfortable in answering questions and managing their time effectively under exam conditions.

How does it help to assess students on international parameters? Research has confirmed that the curricula used across the world are largely similar. What differentiate sets of students is how the curriculum is interpreted by the teacher and what the students imbibe from it. Exposing the students to international testing patterns prepares them to become global players.