Celebrating 30 Years of delivering the International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) to Australian students

This year, UNSW Global, Educational Assessment Australia (EAA) is celebrating 30 years of delivering ICAS to Australian students. During this time, the program has grown significantly and is now offered in over 20 countries around the world; attracting more than 2 million student entries worldwide.

ICAS is the only suite of competitions and assessments in the world that is offered to students across 6 subject areas in years 3-12.

When ICAS was first offered, it was known as the Australian Schools Competition and was only offered in Mathematics and Science. Since then, our name has changed a couple of times but our expertise has continued to grow so that we can now offer a suite of tests that is engaging to students and practical for teachers.

EAA encourages schools to use ICAS as an assessment for learning and provides diagnostic reports on an individual student level as well as on a whole school level. Schools can also customise their data views to make them most effective. EAA also provides annual accredited assessment conferences for teachers to learn more about effective assessment and find out how ICAS can moderate, complement or even supplement internal assessment.

Not only practical for use in assessment, ICAS is a highly recognised competition and each participating student receives a certificate acknowledging their achievement. High achieving students are awarded certificates of credit, distinction and high distinction and the top scoring student in each year level in each region is awarded a UNSW medal. We are pleased to advise that UNSW medals can be used to obtain ATAR bonus points into undergraduate programs at UNSW where places are highly competitive.

30 years of ICAS means that we are becoming an historic part of Australia education. It is hard to imagine but many EAA staff remember sitting ICAS throughout both their primary and secondary years of schooling!

It has been a whirlwind adventure achieving this massive milestone and we couldn’t be happier with what we’ve accomplished. Now, we are focussed on achieving our next big milestone which means continuing to innovate, excel and lead the way in educational assessment which is mixed with healthy academic achievement. To find out more about EAA or ICAS go to our website at www.eaa.unsw.edu.au or contact our friendly customer service team on info@eaa.unsw.edu.au