How to Prepare for ICAS: A Practical Guide

ICAS is curriculum-aligned — but pitched harder than a typical school test, with questions that ask students to apply what they know rather than just recall it. That's the key to preparing well: solidify the curriculum, then practise using it in less familiar, higher-order ways. Here's a practical plan.

1. Know the format

ICAS is an online, mostly multiple-choice assessment, sat by year level, usually in Term 3 (around August–September). It runs across several subjects — Maths, English, Science, Writing, Spelling and Digital Technologies — and you enter each subject separately. Decide which subject(s) your child is sitting and prepare for those specifically. If any of this is new, start with What Is ICAS?

2. Solidify the curriculum first

Because ICAS is curriculum-based, gaps in core content show up quickly. Before doing anything fancy, make sure the year-level fundamentals are secure — number facts, fractions and decimals, measurement, and reading for meaning. Higher-order questions are much easier when the basics are automatic.

3. Practise applying knowledge, not just recalling it

ICAS questions often wrap a familiar idea in an unfamiliar situation — a word problem, a multi-step calculation, a graph to interpret. The best practice mirrors that: questions that make your child choose which method to use and work through a couple of steps, with an explanation afterwards that shows the reasoning.

4. Practise under time, on screen

ICAS is timed and online, so pacing and reading on a screen matter. Doing some practice as a timed set — rather than one relaxed question at a time — builds the stamina and speed the real assessment needs, and takes the surprise out of the clock.

5. Review by topic

After each practice session, sort the misses by topic — number, fractions, measurement, data — so you can see where the real gap is. A short, targeted review of one weak topic beats another round of random questions.

Preparing for ICAS Maths and English

PrepPath offers ICAS-style Maths practice for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9: a timed, multiple-choice mock paper drawn across the maths curriculum and ramped from easier to harder, with an estimated award level afterwards and a full worked explanation for every question. It's built to mirror the applied, higher-order style ICAS Maths uses. Try some ICAS Maths sample questions with worked solutions to see the style, and if your child also enjoys pure problem-solving, compare AMC vs ICAS Maths.

ICAS English works the same way — PrepPath's ICAS-style English practice is a combined Reading and Language Conventions mock paper (Years 3, 5 and 7; Year 9 coming soon), fully explained, so a child gets used to moving between comprehension passages and grammar, punctuation and vocabulary questions under time.

PrepPath is an independent educational platform and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with ICAS Assessments. "ICAS" is used here for description only. PrepPath currently offers ICAS-style Maths practice; other ICAS subjects are not covered. Always check the official ICAS Assessments website for current subjects, year levels and dates.