ICAS Papers A to F: a complete reference

Which paper is my child's year?

ICAS also runs papers outside this range for other year levels; the six above are the primary and junior-secondary papers that most families are looking for.

Every paper at a glance

Formats change from year to year and by delivery mode. Confirm anything you are planning around with your child's school or the official ICAS site.

What differs between the subjects

Mathematics — typed answers from Paper D. Papers A, B and C are mostly multiple choice. From Paper D up, questions 36 to 40 drop the options and ask for a number to be typed in. Those five are consistently the hardest part of the paper, and because they sit at the end, students often run out of time before reaching them.

English — about a minute a question. Papers A to D give exactly as many minutes as they have questions: 45/45, then 50/50. Papers E and F keep 50 questions and allow 55 minutes. There is no typed-answer section at any level. Most of the paper is built on short passages, plus a cloze section.

Spelling — the shortest clock of the four, and the odd one out. Forty minutes at every level, shorter than any Maths, English or Science paper from A to F, even as the paper grows from 40 questions to 50 — the only subject where a longer paper does not get a longer clock. It asks for spelling in four ways — dictated words, rules and conventions, proofreading, and correcting — and ICAS doesn't publish how many questions of each kind a paper has. Note there is no Spelling paper at F level.

Science — not a recall test. Questions are built around the scientific capabilities: observing and measuring, interpreting data, predicting and concluding, reasoning and problem solving, and investigating. Most questions hand you an experiment or a table and ask what follows from it, which catches students who prepared by memorising content.

Questions parents ask about ICAS

How do we enter?
Through your child's school, an ICAS testing centre or an ICAS partner. A school that takes part sets its own sitting day inside each subject's window.

When is it held?
The subject windows fall around August, with each subject on its own week. Exact dates change each year and are published by ICAS.

Why is my child's mark so low?
Because that is how the paper is built. ICAS is designed so the top of each paper stretches students well past their year level, so a raw mark that would be disappointing on a school test can be a strong ICAS result. Read the distribution and the certificate band, not the percentage.

Should my child sit a paper above their year?
Rarely worth it. The paper already extends past year level, so the stretch is built in. Working on speed and accuracy at level almost always produces a better result than sitting a harder paper.

Is one subject harder than another?
They are scaled separately, so the levels are not directly comparable. What is consistent is that Maths D–F carry the typed-answer section, and Spelling has the tightest time per question — under a minute from Paper B up.

Where these details come from

The structures above reflect the published ICAS paper formats. ICAS Assessments updates formats from time to time and delivery is now digital, which can change how questions are presented. The official ICAS site and your child's school are the authority — this page is a convenience, not a substitute for either.

Meritly builds ICAS-style practice papers for Mathematics, English, Spelling and Science across Papers A to F.

Meritly is an independent Australian service and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the organisations that write or run the tests we cover.