International Benchmark Test

Lotus Lake International School has adopted the International Benchmark Test (IBT) conducted by one of the world’s leading educational research centres, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), to diagnose, analyse and compare student learning against global bench-marks.

The International Benchmark Tests is an internationally administered program of assessments to compare student performance globally, between grades and over time.The tests cover English, Mathematics, Science for our students in Grade 3 through 8.

IBT is skill-based and does not follow any single national curriculum, allowing students from all countries to be compared fairly. It helps in tracking student performance against international standards. The assessments are reliable and help to support schools, facilitators and parents to measure learning progress.

Why did we choose IBT assessment over any other assessment?

• The IBT solution compares your child’s performance to an international cohort
• The diagnostic testing is designed to challenge students across a broad range of ability levels
• It assesses deep conceptual understanding rather than simple recall of facts
• The test recognises learning achievement, and monitors progress over time

How is IBT conducted?

The IBT is an online test, conducetd in January every year, the duration of which will be 60 minutes per test for Mathematics, English and Science only. The paper will predominantly be a multiple-choice questionnaire (MCQ) with 40 – 45 questions per test.

The IBT is not tied to a specific curriculum, allowing for fair comparisons between students across schools and around the world, and content is updated every year.

In English the skills assessed are locating information, inferring, predicting, drawing conclusions and reasoning. Students are not asked merely to retrieve information from a passage; they are asked to make inferences, form judgements, and reflect on the texts. Questions addressing higher-order thinking skills are used to ascertain whether a student can 'read between the lines' and understand subtlety and nuance in the English language.

In Mathematics the skills assessed include interpreting data, inferring, predicting, drawing conclusions, reasoning and problem solving. For Mathematics questions, students are asked to make sense of mathematical concepts in everyday situations. IBT Mathematics is not about simply remembering rules and procedures; it requires students to use higher-order thinking skills to apply their mathematical skills to solve problems.

In Science the skills assessed include observing and measuring, interpreting data, inferring, predicting, drawing conclusions, reasoning and problem solving. Students are asked to apply scientific principles to specific problems. IBT Science not only assesses students' knowledge of science, it assesses whether students are capable of applying this knowledge to given contexts. Many of the questions are based on scientific enquiry.

How does ACER report results?

The IBT provides many different reports on student performance to help teachers and schools better understand where their students are positioned on the learning continuum. The Individual Student report provides comprehensive details of the students’ performance across strands.

This experience of IBT is better than any Olympiad exam, as the curriculum of Olympiads is limited in the Indian context only and does not necessarily evaluate skills. IBT on the other hand is of an international standard and helps you compare the abilities of your child to global standards and work on them.

There is no additional cost for attempting the IBT assessment. We encourage every student to mandatorily attempt the IBT and benefit from the outcome.