Focus Education NZ

Focus is proud to be one of the only non-school centres for administering the ICAS academic competition in New Zealand! Designed by experts to be fun, challenging, and test higher-order thinking and problem solving, ICAS assessments are offered across 6 literacy and STEM subjects for school years 3-13.

Why register your child for ICAS?

ICAS assessments began as an annual event over 40 years ago, and has stood the test of time. Each year, experts including psychometricians, experienced teachers, and education measurement experts design the questions to test the full range of your child’s abilities in a fun and challenging way.

ICAS assessments:

• provide detailed feedback on your child’s knowledge and skills in the subject, allowing you and your child’s teachers to focus on the areas your child needs help most
• measure your child’s achievements objectively across their year level and nationally
• challenge your child’s intellectual curiosity outside the school classroom
• reward participation and achievements with official certificates and medals for the top 1% of participants
• support applications for competitive schools and scholarships with concrete proof of your child’s achievements

See our session times and register your child here

What does each ICAS assessment involve?

See below for the details of each of the six assessments on offer.

• Digital Technologies. This assessment tests a student’s ability to work with digital systems, word processing, graphics & multimedia, internet & email, spreadsheets & databases, and programming & scripting.
• Writing. This assessment tests either narrative or persuasive writing and assesses a student’s knowledge of genre, textual grammar, and syntax & punctuation.
• English. This assessment tests a student’s knowledge of vocabulary, comprehension, structure, syntax and voice.
• Science. This assessment tests a student’s skills on real scientific stimulus materials with observing & measuring, interpreting, predicting & concluding, investigating, and reasoning & problem solving.
• Spelling Bee. This assessment tests a student’s skills in spelling with dictation, rules & conventions, proofreading, and error correction.
• Mathematics. This assessment tests a student’s abilities to solve problems with number & arithmetic, algebra & patterns, measures & units, space & geometry, and chance & data.

See our session times and register your child here